Sitting of 9 July 1968

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL
  [Queen's Consent signified; Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown and the Duchy of Cornwall, signified.]
  Bill read the Third time and passed.

  HOUNSLOW CORPORATION BILL [Lords]
  As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.
  MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BOARD BILL [Lords]
  Read a Second time and committed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  MINISTRY OF POWER

    Aluminium Smelters
    Mr. Laneasked the Minister of Power what representations he has received from other large coal consumers about the proposal for a coal-burning aluminium smelter at Lynemouth; and what reply he has made.
    The Minister of Power (Mr. Roy Mason): In view of the commercial considerations involved, I think that any representations should remain confidential.
    Mr. Lane: Will the Minister give us an assurance that when coal deliveries to the Lynemouth smelter start other large coal users who get their supplies from the same pit or pits will be able to get them at the same price?
    Mr. Mason: I would not give any assurances for three to four years hence, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that no subsidies are involved in this deal.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Is the Minister able to say whether there will be other aluminium smelters fuelled by coal and whether or no a statement will be made about the matter before the Recess?
    Mr. Mason: I cannot promise a statement on this matter before the Recess. Negotiations are still proceeding on the two other smelter projects.
    Mrs. Thatcher: May I first congratulate the Minister? I hope, for his sake and for the Ministry's sake, that he stays longer in this post than he did in his previous one. May I ask him to look again at the question my hon. Friend asked, since it is crucial in relation to the interpretation of undue preference or advantage in the Coal Industry Act that other buyers of the same quantity, from the same pits, at the same time, should have the same price as the aluminium smelter users?
    Mr. Mason: I am obliged to the hon. Lady for her introductory remarks. I personally hope that I shall be able to stay a little longer than on the previous occasion. The National Coal Board is well aware of its statutory duty to avoid, and I quote:
    "any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage".
    Sir C. Osborneasked the Minister of Power what information he has obtained as to the price of electricity made available to aluminium smelting concerns in this country, and from international sources the price elsewhere in the world; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Mason: I have nothing to add to the statement made by my predecessor in reply to the hon. Member for Haltem-price (Mr. Wall) on 6th February last.—[Vol. 758 c. 59.]
    Sir C. Osborne: Is the Minister aware that the great hydro-electric plants in Siberia are producing electricity at l/25th of the price being charged by their competitors in the West, and that electricity represents 60 per cent. of the cost of

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    producing aluminium? Before he allows this great capital expenditure in this country, will he look into these two facts and see what their effect is on world markets?
    Mr. Mason: I am obliged for that information. I shall certainly look at it, if the hon. Gentleman wishes. He asked about obtaining information from abroad. I must advise him, as did my predecessor, that these contracts are confidential, and we cannot get to know about them.
    Mrs. Thatcher: Would the Minister, when considering those facts, also consider taking off the fuel tax on oil for electricity generation for these smelters, because it is thought that they could generate their own cheap electricity without any expensive investment grant or other subsidy if that was done?
    Mr. Mason: I cannot give an assurance at this stage, but I will keep the point in mind.
    Mr. G. Campbellasked the Minister of Power if he will now make a statement on the siting of proposed aluminium smelters and the supply of fuel or power to them.
    Mr. Mason: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given by the President of the Board of Trade to the hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Milne) and others on 29th May.—[Vol. 765, c. 1798.]
    Mr. Campbell: Does the Minister realise that continuing uncertainty over Invergordon is most unsatisfactory for the North of Scotland; and that the Government clearly did not give proper consideration to all the important factors involved when they made the initial announcement last year?
    Mr. Mason: The hon. Gentleman should, I think, direct that question to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. I am responsible for fuelling the stations but not for fuelling the station that may be in Invergordon.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend repeat the assurance of the Minister of State, Scottish Office, last Wednesday, that a statement on the aluminium smelters will be made before the Summer Recess?
    Mr. Mason: I cannot give that assurance, because I shall not be making the
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    statement. As my hon. Friend knows, the Board of Trade, the D.E.A. and the Secretary of State for Scotland are all involved, and if a statement affecting Scotland is to be made it will be more proper for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to make that statement.
    Mrs. Ewing: Is the Minister aware that many unemployed persons in Scotland have waited on in the hope of an early announcement, and that many local populations have a real fear of mass exodus unless a decision is announced shortly?
    Mr. Mason: The hon. Lady will appreciate that we have announced this redevelopment programme which will result in a new smelter industry in Britain, affecting parts of Wales, the North-East and Scotland.

    Dual-Fired Power Stations
    Mr. Laneasked the Minister of Power what consultations he has had with the Electricity Council, the Central Electricity Generating Board, and the Gas Council on the possibilities of enlarging the numbers of dual-fired power stations.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power (Mr. Reginald Freeson): Dual-firing of power stations was discussed by the then Minister of Power with the nationalised fuel industries during the Fuel Policy Review. The Government's policy on conversion of coal-fired power stations to other fuels was stated in paragraph 99 of the Fuel Policy White Paper (Cmnd. 3438).
    Mr. Lane: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that, as I understand it, about half the new stations being built in Common Market countries are dual-fired, and is he satisfied with the negligible number in this country?
    Mr. Freeson: As the hon. Member will appreciate, this is a matter for the Central Electricity Generating Board to consider and on which to make the necessary applications to us.

    Oil Products (Temporary Surcharge)
    Sir G. Nabarroasked the Minister of Power what is the result of the steps he has taken to secure a reduction in petrol prices, in particular the withdrawal

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    of the Suez closure premiums; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Minister of Power if he will now remove the oil fuel surcharge payable by growers in the horticultural industry.
    Mr. Mason: The level of the temporary surcharge on oil product prices is under review and I expect to inform the House of the outcome very shortly.

    Steel Imports
    Mr. Hall-Davisasked the Minister of Power what proposals he has for securing a reduction in the volume of imports of bulk steel into the United Kingdom and an increase in the volume of exports.
    Mr. Freeson: We are studying this problem with the other Departments concerned, and with the industry. The excess of world steel-making capacity makes it very difficult.
    Mr. Hall-Davis: In view of the fact that the value of bulk steel imports in the first four months of 1968 was as great as for the whole of 1965, will the hon. Gentleman agree that this is not just a matter for study but one of the gravest concern when seen in the context of our balance of payments position?
    Mr. Freeson: We accept that there should be concern, and we are concerned in this matter. However, it is not confined to this country. There is a world excess of steel-making capacity, and there are international consultations and studies going on, in which we are participating.
    Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Will the hon. Gentleman recollect that the consultations and studies to which he has referred were initiated by his right hon. Friend's last predecessor but one? What progress are they making? Does he not agree that it is useless for industries in different countries to engage in what is tantamount to mutual dumping?
    Mr. Freeson: There is no progress to be reported at this stage. The discussions and studies are continuing. It is, of course, open to the industry to request anti-dumping action to be taken by the Government. But this is not merely confined to this country. There is a world
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    excess of steel-making capacity, and it must be clear that, if there is to be international agreement, it must be mutually arrived at.

    British Steel Corporation
    Mr. Ridleyasked the Minister of Power whether 'the amount, and the terms, of the British Steel Corporation's commencing capital debt have yet been agreed.
    Mr. Mason: No, Sir. The precise amount of the debt will not be known until the value of the unquoted securities, which are still to be valued, has been settled. The total may be in the region of£820 million. I hope to say something about the terms of the debt during the debate on the Resolution to increase the Corporation's borrowing limit next Friday.
    Mr. Ridley: Why has this commencing capital debt not been agreed? It is now over a year since the Corporation was set up. Is the Minister aware that it is impossible to conduct business properly unless matters of this sort are known at the beginning? Will he take action where his predecessors have failed to get some progress?
    Mr. Mason: Yes. But the hon. Gentleman must appreciate that settlement of the terms for the debt obviously raises complicated matters. It will take some time, and discussions are continuing with the Corporation.
    Sir Knox Cunninghamasked the Minister of Power what, taking account of the obligation to pay interest upon its commercial capital debt, was the appropriate profit or loss of the British Steel Corporation for its first half year.
    Mr. Mason: I have not yet determined the terms of the debt and I cannot, therefore, give such a figure.
    Sir Knox Cunningham: Is it not likely that when the right hon. Gentleman has determined the debt the figure will show a substantial loss? If so, what steps is he taking to improve the position? In any event, will the taxpayer have to pay for the loss?
    Mr. Mason: If the hon. Gentleman wants to be political about this, then he may care to know that in 1966–67 the

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    nationalised steel companies made a loss of about£10 million, but 10 months of that was before vesting day.
    Mr. Berryasked the Minister of Power how many letters he has received objecting to the salary of the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation.
    Mr. Mason: None, Sir.
    Mr. Berry: Would the Minister agree that his reply confirms that the public expect the right salary to be paid to the right man in the right job? Would he not further agree that this applies equally to the public and to the private sector? Will he bear in mind that those who are paid so-called "large" salaries pay a large part of them back to the Treasury in taxation?
    Mr. Mason: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware of how much Lord Melchett gets. It is, at the moment,£16,000, and it is a sum he agreed on.
    Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Would the right hon. Gentleman like to set an example, and ask the nationalised industries in their annual reports to give the salaries of directors net after tax, as well as gross?
    Mr. Mason: I will consider it, but I really do not think that it is necessary.
    Mr. Edward M. Taylorasked the Minister of Power what has been the result of his discussions with the British Steel Corporation about its price structure.
    Mr. Mason: I am in touch with the Corporation about the major price review which they are now undertaking, but it will not be completed before the end of the year.
    Mr. Taylor: Is the Minister aware that shipbuilders, engineers and others in Scotland are greatly concerned that the Steel Corporation, like the gas industry and the Coal Board, will end by charging more for its product in Scotland? Will he give a guarantee that under nationalisation Scottish shipbuilders and engineers will not be expected to pay more for steel than those in England and Wales?
    Mr. Mason: I cannot give an assurance of that kind—[HON. MEMBERS:
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    "Oh."]—nor do I propose to do so until the review is complete.
    Mr. James Hamilton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many steel firms in Scotland are closing because they cannot compete with competitors in the South? Will he give an assurance that there will be a unified policy about prices of steel?
    Mr. Mason: These are matters which I shall have to take note of after the review has been completed.
    Sir G. Nabarro: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Selective Employment Tax premium and similar advantages given in Scotland are largely nullified by the excessive price which Scottish firms have to pay for coal, gas, electricity and other services under this iniquitous differential pricing scheme?
    Mr. Mason: If the hon. Gentleman wants to pursue those questions, they should not be directed to me.

    Gas Industry
    Mr. Emeryasked the Minister of Power whether he will announce the financial target of the gas industry for 1969–70.
    Mr. Mason: Yes, Sir, when it has been decided.
    Mr. Emery: It appears that the general approach of both Ministers is that there is no progress to report. In pressing the Minister, I realise that he has only just taken over, but we have had from both—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Questions, please.
    Mr. Emery: Will he, therefore, speed up the inactivity—
    An Hon. Member: How can one speed up inactivity?
    Mr. Emery:—of his two previous colleagues in getting a result in order that we can properly assist the financial state of this industry?
    Mr. Mason: I expect to reach a decision on this question before the end of the year.
    Mr. Palmerasked the Minister of Power if he will state the expected rate of return on the£1,600 million to be

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    spent by the gas industry up to 1973 in the provision, among other things, of natural gas supplies to consumers.
    Mr. Freeson: Investment by the gas industry is expected to earn at least the d.c.f. rate of 8 per cent. prescribed for the nationalised industries generally.
    Mr. Palmer: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving a figure which the previous Minister of Power seemed unable to give. Is he satisfied that this expenditure has been properly reconciled with comparable expenditure on nuclear power and on the coal industry?
    Mr. Freeson: The answer, of course, must be "Yes, Sir", because the expenditure derives from the policy laid down in the White Paper following a very long series of very detailed studies.
    Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Can the Minister say how much the public will gain in a reduction in prices by this natural supply? There is a general feeling at present that this great discovery will give very little advantage; in the form of cheaper prices to the people who buy the gas?
    Mr. Freeson: As I have said previously, it will take quite some time before the full effect of natural gas coming fully on stream will show itself in price levels, but we believe that it will have an effect in real terms on gas prices.

    Gas Consumption and Prices
    Mr. Emeryasked the Minister of Power what forecast of the level of domestic gas prices was used as a basis for the estimates of gas consumption in 1971 and 1975, respectively, contained in the Fuel Policy White Paper.
    Mr. Freeson: The White Paper estimates took into account likely movement of gas prices in relation to competing fuels, not absolute levels.
    Mr. Emery: If we do not have the financial objectives and a statement about the fuel duty until the end of the year, how is it possible to form a long-term judgment of the financial position of the industry?
    Mr. Freeson: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman re-reads the excellent publications which have been produced by the gas industry and the appropriate sections of the White Paper.
    Mr. Eadie: Is my hon. Friend aware of the feeling in the country that the gas consumer has been conned over the question of gas prices? Will he look into the high-powered advertising that goes on and which is believed by some of us to have deceived gas consumers?
    Mr. Freeson: The expenditure of the gas industry, as of the other nationalised industries, on advertising is only a small proportion of its turnover. In fact, there is every reason to believe that ultimately, when natural gas comes fully on stream, there will be an impact on price levels for the consumer.

    North Sea Gas
    Mr. Crouchasked the Minister of Power what estimate he has made of the value of the capital assets of the gas industry which will be obsolete as a result of the speed at which North Sea gas is to be introduced.
    Mr. Freeson: The book value of assets made obsolete will be influenced by the rate of converting distributing systems to natural gas, and the conversion of oil reforming plant to produce synthetic natural gas for peak loads. The programme will adapt to developing needs. Subject to these factors, the Gas Council estimates that the book value involved might be about£300 million.
    Mr. Crouch: Apart from being somewhat woolly, that is an incredibly disappointing Answer. While my hon. Friends are anxious to see progress made with natural gas as quickly as possible, is he aware that the White Paper referred to the uncertainties involved in this whole project? Would he agree that£300 million is an excessive amount to become an abortive investment?
    Mr. Freeson: Not in the circumstances. In accepting that this will be, in effect, an obsolescence write-off, one is taking into account the fact that there will be a total benefit not only to the gas industry but to the other fuel industries and to the economy as a whole.
    Mr. Hector Hughes: As my hon. Friends comments are based on the speed with which North Sea gas will be introduced, can be say what that speed will be and how it is ascertained?
    Mr. Freeson: The estimated period of the programme on which the Gas Council

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    has embarked has appeared in the White Paper and various other publications. I am not able to say in detail at Question Time how that programme was ascertained.

    Steel Industry (Private Sector)
    Mr. Michael Shawasked the Minister of Power if he will give details of the committees set up by him representing both the British Steel Corporation and the private sector with a view to ensuring fair competition, particularly on the question of pricing policy.
    Mr. Mason: The Iron and Steel Advisory Committee, on which both the public and private sectors are represented, provides a forum for discussion of common problems.
    Mr. Shaw: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the private sector's interests are fully safeguarded in this matter?
    Mr. Mason: The Corporation is Statute-bound to publish its prices, its customers have a right to complain to the Iron and Steel Consumers' Council, private competitors can complain to me about what they regard to be unfair practices and there is the Committee to which I referred in my Answer. What more does the hon. Gentleman want?

    Electricity Industry
    Mr. Kenneth Lewisasked the Minister of Power whether he will make a statement about his consultations on the structure of the electricity industry.
    Mr. Mason: I shall be continuing the consultations on the need for changes in the structure of the electricity industry. It is likely to be some time before I shall be ready to make a statement.
    Mr. Lewis: Can the Minister offer any hope that his statement will be made before the Summer Recess? Will he bear in mind, in his discussions, that the industry requires less rather than more Government interference and control by this House so that it can get on with its commercial job?
    Mr. Mason: I cannot promise to make a statement before the Recess. I will take into consideration the latter point made by the hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Palmer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that employees in the industry are anxious that an early statement should be made, remembering that delay is very bad for morale?
    Mr. Mason: I appreciate that, but this is rather a technical matter which will take some time. We want to make sure that if any change is merited, it occurs without disruption to the industry.
    Mrs. Thatcher: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this is more than a technical matter? If he is unable to make a further statement, can he say with what purpose in mind he is looking at the structure of the electricity industry? Is it to bring production and marketing closer together, in accordance with the comments in the P.I.B. Report?
    Mr. Mason: We are taking that into consideration. It is one of the points we are examining.
    Mr. Manuel: In connection with any possible changes in the structure of the electricity industry, does my right hon. Friend envisage the industry working more closely with the gas industry? Is he aware that large savings could be made—for example, in advertising and salesmanship matters—and that these industries could work closer together instead of often being in opposition to each other?
    Mr. Mason: Yes, Sir. I am aware of that and no doubt the House will have noted that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has on some minor points, though not on major matters, been trying to get both sides to work together, especially in the use of showrooms and meter reading.

    Meter Reading
    Mr. Kenneth Bakerasked the Minister of Power what consultations he has had with the Electricity Council and with the Gas Council about the scope for greater productivity in meter reading; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Freeson: I have had extensive discussions with the industries' area boards in different parts of the country about joint meter reading and the possibility of feasibility studies being carried out. These discussions have covered other

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    aspects of efficiency in meter reading as well.
    Mr. Baker: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that about 5,000 men are going round the country reading gas meters while another 5,000 are reading electricity meters? Will he give some urgency to the task of combining the two forces into a national meter-reading force and so make a substantial overall saving?
    Mr. Freeson: I suggest that to begin with the hon. Gentleman checks his figures. Those he gave were not quite accurate.
    Mr. Baker: That is no answer.
    Mr. Freeson: If the hon. Gentleman will contain himself, I will explain the position. I have looked again at the question which the Weir Report considered—that of an independent meter-reading service—and I have concluded that that is not the right way to deal with this problem.
    Mr. Spriggs: Is my right hon. Friend aware that hon. Gentlemen opposite had 13 years in which to do something about this, but did nothing?

    Salaries
    Mr Kenneth Bakerasked the Minister of Power what representations he has received for changes in the salary structure of the persons appointed by him in the coal, gas and electricity industries; what reply he has sent; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Mason: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the Answer given on 1st July by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity.—[Vol. 767, c. 1081–6.]
    Mr. Baker: That Answer referred to the whole salary structure of the P.I.B. Pending the P.I.B.'s Report, will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that salary considerations will not inhibit him from appointing the right man to the right job?
    Mr. Mason: When vacancies arise I shall certainly do as the hon. Gentleman suggests and suggest the right man for the right job.
    Mr. Emery: As there is a vacancy, will the right hon. Gentleman give an
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    assurance that the salary level will not preclude him from attracting the best man for this job?
    Mr. Mason: I am hoping that the salary will not preclude such an appointment. It depends, of course, on who we have in mind for the job.

    Domestic Gas Appliances (Safety)
    Mr. Goodhartasked the Minister of Power whether he is satisfied that the safety precautions of the gas boards are adequate when domestic appliances are fitted; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Freeson: Yes, Sir. The high safety standards of the industry were confirmed by a detailed survey by officials last year. My right hon. Friend will examine carefully the findings of the inquiry into the accident at Ronan Point to see if they suggest any improvements are due.
    Mr. Goodhart: Is the Minister aware that, on grounds of economy, cut-off points are no longer automatically fitted in each appliance when it is installed and that there is some anxiety about this?
    Mr. Freeson: If the hon. Gentleman cares to write to the Department on the subject we will certainly take it up with him.

    New Power Stations
    Mr. Shinwellasked the Minister of Power what decision has now been reached about an electricity generating station at Seaton Carew.
    Mr. Lubbockasked the Minister of Power when the Central Electricity Generating Board will be allowed to place orders for the Hartlepool and Heysham stations.
    Mr. Mason: No decision has yet been reached. The timing of orders for any new power stations will depend on the outcome of the present capital investment reviews.
    Mr. Shinwell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that we have been waiting for a decision for two years, and now that we have a new Minister surely there will be an improvement on his predecessors? If there is not, we will tell him to get out. Is he aware that it would be far better to reach a decision, whatever it is, because

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    as things are there is a good deal of insecurity?
    Mr. Mason: I am aware of my right hon. Friend's views. I noticed that in the Adjournment debate on 11th April he said and he has repeated it today—that what he wanted was a decision, irrespective of whether it was in favour of nuclear power or coal. I hope to be able to give a decision fairly soon.
    Mr. Lubbock: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the last order for a generating station was placed by the Central Electricity Generating Board in March, 1967, for Hinckley Point B? How does he think that the electrical manufacturing industry can make progress when it does not get an order in 16 months?
    Mr. Mason: I appreciate that one of the great concerns about this delay is the effect on suppliers, and although I appreciate the point that the ordering took place in March, the start was in September, 1967.
    Mr. Leadbitter: Is the Minister aware that we have had one excuse after another over the past two years in order to qualify the Government's indecision? We now have before us today a suggestion by my right hon. Friend about capital estimates. Some time ago it was load estimates. Will my right hon. Friend understand that a case has been made out, and that the unemployment position in my area also requires a decision?
    Sir W. Bromley-Davenport: Too long. Sit down.
    Mr. Leadbitter: Shut up.
    Mr. Mason: I assume that my hon. Friend is speaking to an hon. Member opposite. A decision on the Central Electricity Generating Board's investment programme is expected before the autumn, so we shall be able to clear up the matter then.
    Mr. Ridley: Though we are in the white heat of the technological revolution the right hon. Gentleman's Department has made no decision of any sort whatever. Will the Minister now undertake to give a decision on this matter before the Summer Recess?
    Mr. Mason: No, Sir. I cannot make a decision before the House rises.

    Natural Gas (Conversion of Appliances)
    Mr. Dempseyasked the Minister of Power if he will give a general direction to the area gas boards to take steps at their own expense to convert domestic gas appliances for the use of natural gas; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Freeson: No, Sir. The boards are already doing this. Under the Gas Act, 1948, they must meet the cost of converting consumers' appliances to use natural gas.
    Mr. Dempsey: Is my hon. Friend therefore giving the House an assurance that the Scottish Gas Board will be responsible for the cost of the total conversion of all gas appliances that will be using this supply of natural gas, in view of the fact that gas prices are much higher in Scotland than in England and Wales?
    Mr. Freeson: The Scottish Gas Board is in precisely the same position as every other area gas board, in that it will undertake the conversion and will not charge individual consumers.
    Mr. Lubbockasked the Minister of Power in what areas the gas supply to consumers has been converted to natural gas; and what has been the average cost per consumer in each case.
    Mr. Mason: Conservion programmes have been started in six of the gas board areas. Only a very small proportion of consumers have so far been converted, and it is too early to give a realistic average cost per consumer.
    Mr. Lubbock: Will the Minister give these figures to me when they become available? Is he aware that the National Board for Prices and Incomes has estimated that it would cost£30 per domestic consumer to convert to natural gas? Does not that seem a very high figure, and will be look at it?
    Mr. Mason: Yes, Sir. This figure has been bandied about and may well prove to be true, but I want the hon. Gentleman to realise that in the cost of conversion there are—apart from the conversion of appliances—surveys, administrative costs and associated distribution costs, which have to be taken into consideration.

    Generating Plant (Orders)
    Mr. Palmerasked the Minister of Power if he will counteract the reduction of orders for new generating plant due to the present recession in electrical demand by sanctioning an accelerated programme for the replacement of out-of-date plant in order to improve the overall efficiency of the British electricity supply system and to reduce operating costs.
    Mr. Mason: I shall take these points into account in considering the electricity industry's capital development programme.
    Mr. Palmer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the electrical manufacturing industry is having great difficulty in maintaining export targets because of lack of home orders? Is net this suggestion a very sensible way of getting over the difficulty?
    Mr. Mason: I should remind my hon. Friend that the C.E.G.B. already has over 20,000 megawatts of new plant under construction, but I appreciate that some older plants that are labour-intensive could go out, and would be a saving if we embarked on a new building programme, so we will keep that point in mind.

    Fuel Policy (Devaluation)
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Minister of Power if he will make a statement on the progress made in modifying the contents of the White Paper on Fuel Policy following devaluation; and whether such modifications will result in slowing down of the rate of pit closures.
    Mr. Mason: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to him on 6th February by my right hon. Friend, the present Minister of Transport.—[Vol. 758. c. 211.]
    Mr. Hamilton: Is it not the case that my right hon. Friend's two predecessors said that there would be no appreciable difference in the content of the White Paper as a consequence of devaluation? Does he himself accept that position? If he does not, will he produce another White Paper, and make sure that it is debated on the Floor of the House?
    Mr. Mason: On the latter point, "No, Sir". On the first point, what did come out was that devaluation made British coal cheaper in export markets and although these will increase there will be no dramatic increase.
    Mr. Lubbock: Would not one of the effects of devaluation be to alter the order of merit of existing plants of the C.E.G.B. system, and will he say how much coal he expects to be burned in C.E.G.B. stations in 1968–69 as a result of the change?
    Mr. Mason: I could not go into that detail without prior notice.

    Gas Prices (Scotland)
    Mr. Edward M. Taylorasked the Minister of Power by what percentage the price of gas in Scotland exceeded the average revenue per therm in England and Wales in the latest annual period for which figures are available; and what were the comparable percentage differences in each of the previous four years.
    Mr. Freeson: 25 per cent. in 1966–67;the figures for the four preceding years, beginning with 1962–63, were 24 per cent., 19 per cent., 13 per cent., and 17 per cent.
    Mr. Taylor: How can the Minister justify a situation in which all people in Scotland pay a quarter more for gas than all people in England and Wales? Does he not realise that this undermines a great deal of the work done by industrial development and otherwise? Will be reconsider the whole question?
    Mr. Freeson: As I have tried to point out in answer to previous Questions, it is not correct to say that this compares with all people in England and Wales. One must compare one with another and those in Scotland are not the highest priced in the country.

  COAL

    National Coal Board (Companies)
    Mr. J. H. Osbornasked the Minister of Power if he will undertake to inform the House of all purchases by a nationalised industry for which he is responsible or by its wholly-owned subsidiaries or

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    any subsidiary in which it has a majority share holding, of shares in any company, together with the cost involved, immediately the purchase or takeover has been completed.
    Mr. Ridleyasked the Minister of Power if he will issue a general direction to the National Coal Board to publish in its Annual Report the names, the cost and all details of any further acquisitions of companies made by itself or its subsidiaries.
    Mr. Hall-Davisasked the Minister of Power if he will issue a general direction to the nationalised industries for which he is responsible to publish in their annual report the names, the cost and all details of any further acquisitions made by themselves or their subsidiaries.
    Mr. Freeson: Information about companies bought by the industries referred to will be included in their annual Reports and Accounts which are laid before the House. Copies of the accounts of the N.C.B.'s partly-owned subsidiaries will be placed in the Library.
    Mr. Osborn: Whilst I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary's reply, may I ask what steps will be taken to inform us as and when these purchases take place rather than waiting for the Annual Report which will be well after the event? Will he ensure that the Report gives details of purchases by each individual subsidiary and that they will not be put under one collective heading, which I think the Parliamentary Secretary will agree has hitherto been the case?
    Mr. Freeson: In reply to the first point, as has been said before in reply to similar questions, it is not the policy to announce each individual item. In reply to the second point, I can give an assurance to the hon. Member and to the House that the National Coal Board will in future give in its own accounts information on all the companies owned either by itself or by any of its subsidiaries.
    Mr. Hall-Davis: Will the Parliamentary Secretary also give an undertaking that the information will continue for a reasonable period to be given separately with regard to the profitability of these acquisitions, so that their performance
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    can be judged against the profit criteria laid down for nationalised industries?
    Mr. Freeson: I take it that when the information is published in relation to each company owned by the National Coal Board or its subsidiaries it will give the relevant information to which the hon. Member refers.
    Mr. Ridley: Will the hon. Gentleman agree that his answer to this question last month, that information was contained in the annual reports of the industries concerned, was misleading because the annual reports only say that a number of companies were acquired? Does he now give an undertaking that the full names, prices, costs and information relating to each company will in future be given in the reports?
    Mr. Freeson: I have already answered the main burden of the question. In reply to the first point made by the hon. Member, I would not accept that I was misleading the House on a previous occasion.

    Pricing Policy
    Mr. J. H. Osbornasked the Minister of Power what has been the outcome of his discussions with the National Coal Board about pricing policy.
    Mr. Speedasked the Minister of Power what has been the result of his consultations with the National Coal Board on its pricing policies; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Mason: Consultations are continuing.
    Mr. Osborn: I welcome the fact that we have a Minister of Power from Yorkshire, because he will be aware that in Yorkshire we have the cheapest pits providing coal to the most modern power stations. Will he take note of the need to provide electricity to users in that area, particularly steel users, at pithead and power station prices and not at average prices?
    Mr. Mason: That is a very good constituency Question, and I will take note of what the hon. Gentleman says.
    Mr. W. Baxter: When discussing the question of coal prices with the National Coal Board, will my right hon. Friend

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    have regard to the fact that coal prices in Scotland are much higher than in England and Wales, and will he take steps to see that there are uniform prices throughout Great Britain?
    Mr. Mason: I am aware of the concern about industrial coal pricing, and these paints will be taken into consideration in the review.
    Mr. Speed: Will the Minister agree that, unless the April, 1966, pricing agreement between the C.E.G.B. and the National Coal Board is modified, many highly efficient collieries with long term reserves such as the Warwickshire coalfields will be out of business in the next two or three years?
    Mr. Mason: I am aware of the consequences.
    Mr. Eadie: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is considerable resentment in Scotland over the differential price policy, which, incidentally was started by a Tory Government? This is not a great incentive to industrialists in Scotland to use coal.
    Mr. Mason: I am aware of the very strong Scottish views on this, and they will be take a into account.
    Mr. Ridley: Can the Minister say whether long-run marginal costing will be employed in determining Coal Board prices in future in accordance with the White Paper on the Nationalised Industries?
    Mr. Mason: The hon. Gentleman was chasing me on the Post Office when the N.B.P.I. looked at this. It will be looked at.

    Farm Rents
    Mr. David Watkinsasked the Minister of Power if the National Coal Board's proposal to impose triennial rent increases on tenant farmers occupying Coal Board farms is in accordance with Her Majesty's Government's policy on prices and incomes.
    Mr. Freeson: My right hon. Friend, the Minister of Agriculture has recently written to the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners Association and drawn the attention of the N.C.B. to the need for restraint in negotiating farm
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    rent increases. I am sure the Board will shew this in line with Government policy.
    Mr. Watkins: May we take it from that that the National Coal Board will accept further responsibility in the matter of the modernisation of farmsteadings, in view of the proposed increases?
    Mr. Freeson: The communication to the National Coal Board was in line with the letters which were written to the other two organisations, that restraint should be shown in this matter in line with the White Paper. It did not deal with the point to which my hon. Friend has referred.
    Mr. W. H. K. Baker: Would it not be in the interests of the National Coal Board and, therefore, the nation at large, if the Board go rid of its holdings in agricultural land?
    Mr. Freeson: No, Sir.

    Output and Manpower
    Sir G. Nabarroasked the Minister of Power if he will state the coal output for the six months to 30th June, 1968;what estimate he has made for the full year 1968;and how many less men were employed in the coal industry at 30th June, 1968, compared with one year earlier.
    Mr. Freeson: Up to 29th June, 1968, N.C.B. coal output totalled 84·7 million tons. By the end of the year this figure will rise to 163 million tons. N.C.B. colliery manpower at 29th June, 1968, 347,975 was 55,389 lower than a year ago.
    Sir G. Nabarro: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether the run-down in the coalmines is now proceeding at the rate envisaged in the fuel White Paper or whether there has been any change in the plans for the run-down in the pits?
    Mr. Freeson: We have no reason at this stage to believe, taking the period of the White Paper to which the hon. Gentleman referred, that the average will vary from the original approximate forecast. The figure that I quoted, which is a June to June figure, does not necessarily reflect the comparative figures on a March to March basis, when they come to be published.

    Pit Closures (Scotland)
    Mr. Eadieasked the Minister of Power what further consultations have taken place between his Department and the National Coal Board on future pit closures in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Mason: I am kept informed by the National Coal Board about the position in Scotland. I understand that the Unions have been informed that three collieries are to close in July.
    Mr. Eadie: Is my right hon. Friend aware that future pit closures in Scotland are causing great anxiety amongst miners in view of their effects on future employment? What consideration has he given to the policy of the miners' union, which was to underwrite the present coalmining industry?
    Mr. Mason: I shall certainly be taking a fresh look at the coal policy and, as a first step, I shall be receiving the General Secretary and the President of the N.U.M. on Friday morning.

    National Coal Board (Profits)
    Mr. Crouchasked the Minister of Power what was the profit made by the National Coal Board for the year 1967–68, after allowing for depreciation and interest; and what has been the percentage return on capital employed.
    Mr. Freeson: I would ask the hon. Gentleman to await the Board's annual accounts, which will be published next month.
    Mr. Crouch: Can the hon. Gentleman say what element of the N.C.B.'s assets at 31st March, 1968, were represented by stocks on the ground?
    Mr. Freeson: Not without notice.

    Stocks
    Mr. Geoffrey Wilsonasked the Minister of Power what directions he has given to the National Coal Board on limiting their stocks of coal.
    Mr. Mason: Following consultations with my Department, the National Coal Board is planning to limit undistributed stocks to about 30 million tons, subject to short-term or seasonal fluctuations.
    Mr. Wilson: What effect will this have on the pit closure programme in the next four years?
    Mr. Mason: It will have no effect at the moment. I am hesitant to say what effect it will have in the next four years. Stocks at present amount to about 29 million tons.

  MINISTRY OF HEALTH

    Water Supply Fluoridation
    Mr. Dudley Smithasked the Minister of Health if he will send a circular to local authorities advising them not to institute experiments in the fluoridation of water supplies for particular towns or villages without his prior knowledge, and to notify local communities before beginning such experiments.
    The Minister of Health (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): Local health authorities and water undertakings have already been asked to consult my Department and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government before formulating any proposals for fluoridation. Local consultation is a matter for the local health authority concerned.
    Mr. Smith: Does not the Minister therefore think that he should get in touch with the South Warwickshire Water Board, which recently carried out an experiment in Leek Wootton in Warwickshire without the consent of the local community and to which the vast majority of the community objected?
    Mr. Robinson: I know about this experiment. It is in the nature of equipment trials and the equipment has worked very satisfactorily under laboratory conditions. It is being tested merely to ensure that it will not deliver a dosage less than the required level. It is based on a fail-safe principle. I think there is no reason for the hon. Member's constituents to be concerned about it.

  HOSPITALS

    Guy's Hospital (Resignations)
    Dame Irene Wardasked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement on the further resignations at Guy's Hospital.
    Mr. K. Robinson: The deputy matron resigned with effect on 30th September; she gave no reasons. The senior assistant matron leaves on 13th July to take up a post for which she applied some months ago. I am satisfied that all the necessary steps are being taken to maintain the nursing services at the hospital.
    Dame Irene Ward: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I think Lord Robens has too many jobs he knows nothing about? [Interruption.] He knows nothing technically about running a hospital. For Lord Robens to invite a management consultant group to go into vital hospital administration is absolutely contrary to the principles of good administration in hospitals. Will the Minister carry out a proper inquiry so that we shall really know where we are about this most important position in Guy's Hospital?
    Mr. Robinson: I do not think there is any reason for any inquiry of the kind the hon. Lady suggests. Of course I do not accept her remarks about Lord Robens in whom I have full confidence as Chairman of the Board of Governors. I suggest that the hon. Lady might be well advised not to jump to too many conclusions on the basis of incomplete information.

    LOCATION OF INDUSTRY
    Mr. Sheldonasked the Prime Minister what plans he has for the unification of location of industry policy.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): Present arrangements already ensure the proper co-ordination of Government policy in this field but if my hon. Friend has any particular suggestions to make I would be happy to consider them.
    Mr. Sheldon: Since the many successes of Government policy in the regions are largely due to effective use of I.D.C.s and investment grants, would not my right hon. Friend agree that if policy and administration were built around these successes we might be able to encourage rather better movement of industry to those parts of the country where it is most needed?
    The Prime Minister: These instruments are important, but they are only part of the much wider responsibility of the economic planning councils whose responsibility goes beyond industrial planning and industrial location and extends to the whole system of social planning, road planning and town and country planning generally. It is for that reason that their work is coordinated by the Department of Economic Affairs.
    Mr. Deedes: Is the Prime Minister aware that, at least in the South-East, all too often there arises a conflict between policies of the Board of Trade, the D.E.A. and Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and that it is very difficult to run policy under three masters?
    The Prime Minister: I am not aware of any conflict between the Departments, but I was aware of some anxieties in the South-East about the responsibility of the Joint Committee of Local Authorities on the one hand and the work of the Economic Planning Council on the other. I understood it had been pretty well sorted out by now.

    MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
    Mr. Moonmanasked the Prime Minister if he will take steps to set up a committee of inquiry with a view to co-ordinating the various Departmental responsibilities for, and standards of, management education in the United Kingdom.
    The Prime Minister: I am not convinced that a committee of inquiry would serve a useful purpose, but if my hon. Friend would care to make a case I would be happy to have it examined.
    Mr. Moonman: While recognising the positive attitude adopted by Government and industry in recent years towards matters of training, may I ask my right hon. Friend to reconsider the question in view of some of the anomalies which exist because of the fragmentation of management training in colleges, universities and companies?
    The Prime Minister: I understand my hon. Friend's anxieties, but the problem

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    is that management training goes on in a considerable number of different areas. We have the business schools in London and Manchester. Clearly this should be a matter for the University Grants Committee and education authorities. The powers of industrial training boards bring in the Department of Employment and Productivity. If my hon. Friend will send fuller information about any ways in which he thinks these various jobs can be better co-ordinated, I shall be glad to examine them.
    Mr. Ian Lloyd: Will the Prime Minister agree that one of the most important things the Government can do to encourage a high level of management training in Britain is to ensure that the rewards do not fall below what is virtually an international level?
    The Prime Minister: That raises very wide questions, but I am sure the hon. Member will agree that under successive Governments there has been a great improvement in getting the best men for the job and seeing that they are adequately trained.

    RHODESIA
    Mr. Winnickasked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the present position with regard to the illegal régime in Southern Rhodesia.
    The Prime Minister: I have nothing to add to the Answers I gave to Questions on 2nd July.—[Vol. 767, c. 1304–5.]
    Mr. Winnick: Does my right hon. Friend agree that recent happenings in Salisbury seem to confirm Lord Alport's view that no further progress would be served by negotiating with the illegal régime? Would he confirm that it is, and remains, British policy that there shall be no independence in Rhodesia before majority rule?
    The Prime Minister: So far as recent events in Rhodesia are concerned, I think it is too early yet to draw any conclusion from them, whether as a result of the recent article by Lord Alport or in any other direction. In regard to our policy for Rhodesia, this is firmly rooted in the six principles and I have answered many times in this House about our position on Nibmar.
    Mr. Heath: As the dismissal of Mr. Harper by Mr. Smith means at least a change in the balance of the men and the administration around Mr. Smith and also implies that Mr. Smith is resisting pressure to move further towards a republican constitution or towards racial discrimination, does not the Prime Minister consider that this is at least some indication that the moment has arrived when he should seriously consider the resumption of negotiations?
    The Prime Minister: To the extent that Mr. Smith has now got rid of Mr. Harper I agree that that is a welcome factor. There were a number of men around Mr. Smith who made him a prisoner. Mr. Harper was only one. The right hon. Gentleman will recognise that the "Tiger" agreement was sabotaged by people like Mr. Harper, and there were others. We will recognise that he voted in support of those who sabotaged that agreement.
    Mr. Heath: The Prime Minister must not go on repeating a complete distortion of the truth about the debate on the "Tiger" talks. What I am putting to him now is that there is a firm indication that serious consideration should be given by the Prime Minister to the question of a resumption of negotiations. Unless the indications are accepted, the Prime Minister himself is a prisoner of his past.
    The Prime Minister: In so far as I or anyone in the House is a prisoner of anything on Rhodesia, it is that we are prisoner of the declarations made by both Governments about the six principles. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman similarly considers himself bound by those principles. On the general point the right hon. Gentleman has made, I agree that, to the extent that any group of men in Rhodesia capable of assuming the responsibilities of Government can show that they will not be pushed about by racialists and can show, as we insisted on the "Tiger", that the immediate future of Rhodesia must be a multi-racial Government, the omens look to that extent more hopeful. I think that that is what the right hon. Gentleman is indicating. On the other point about his vote, perhaps he would go back and study his Motion and the form of his vote.
    Mr. Shinwell: Has my right hon. Friend observed that Mr. Smith, like the

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    Leader of the Opposition here, has lost the support of his Right wing? Does not my right hon. Friend, in certain circumstances which seem to be prevalent, obtain some consolation from that fact?
    The Prime Minister: I think that the differences between the two countries and between the two Parliamentary systems are such that it would not be helpful to draw exact comparisons. In so far as my right hon. Friend's interpretation of recent events is correct, I hope it will be true of both these party Leaders that they will free themselves of dependence on their racialists.

    HOUSE OF LORDS (REFORM)
    Mr. Martenasked the Prime Minister if he will move to set up a Select Committee to consider the working of the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949.
    Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Prime Minister what discussions he has had with those concerned on the question of publishing the details of agreements so far reached in the inter-party talks on reform of the House of Lords.
    Mr. Arthur Lewisasked the Prime Minister whether he will give an assurance that, in the light of the Government's policy on wages, prices and incomes, his proposals for the reform of the House of Lords will not include any alteration in the 4½guineas per day tax-free expenses allowances or any further payment either as a salary or in any other form.
    The Prime Minister: As to a Select Committee, No, Sir; as to any other aspect of the reform of another place I have as yet nothing to add to the statement I made on 20th June and the Answers I gave to Questions on 25th June and 2nd July.—[Vol. 767, c. 236 and 1301.]
    Mr. Marten: Does not the Prime Minister think that such a Select Committee could very usefully discuss the purely hypothetical case where a party has been returned to power with a very large majority and then in, say, the next 18 months has lost a series of by-elections and has therefore clearly lost the
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    confidence of the country? Would it not be in the national interest, rather than in the party interest, if at that stage a General Election was held? This is a purely hypothetical question.
    The Prime Minister: To follow out the implications of that hypothetical case, there would have been a strong case for another place throwing out the Rent Act, 1957. So far as the timing of General Elections relates to the results of by-elections held in the middle of a Parliament, I seem to remember that it was the Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member that carried on to the last minute allowed under the constitution.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Who is opposing the publication of the details of the agreements that were reached before the talks were concluded? Is it my right hon. Friend, the Leader of the Opposition, or the Leader of the Liberal Party? Let us know who it is and then we might get somewhere.
    The Prime Minister: We have not yet reached that stage. My hon. Friend would be quite wrong to assume that anyone is opposing publication. It is too early for anyone to give an answer to my hon. Friend's question.
    Mr. Arthur Lewis: Will my right hon. Friend categorically deny the statements which have been made in most of the Press that there was a tacit understanding or agreement that£1,500 a year plus the expenses allowance was to be paid? Will he give a further definite undertaking that no such payment will be made or recommended?
    The Prime Minister: I can neither confirm nor deny what has been going on in a Committee which has not yet published its findings, but I had not heard of any such suggestion as that to which my hon. Friend has referred.
    Mr. Maudling: Can the Prime Minister explain to the House why he considers it preferable in the national interest for the reform of the Upper Chamber to take place on a partisan rather than on an all-party basis?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman had better await the proposals that we put before the House for

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    dealing with this situation. It is not this side of the House but his own that has used the House of Lords for partisan purposes.
    Dr. Winstanley: Is the Prime Minister aware that his statement last week that no consideration was being given to the possibility of any Members of the House of Lords being elected to that place has diminished the enthusiasm of hon. Members on this bench for reform of the Upper Chamber and that we would oppose any extension or perpetuation of the other place's powers in the absence of any proposals for election?
    The Prime Minister: I am very sorry that the hon. Gentleman is disappointed, particularly in view of the very objective language he used two or three weeks ago when describing his attitude to another place. I should have thought that there is not much support in any part of the House—I would be very surprised if there was on his own bench—for strengthening the House of Lords or purporting to strengthen it by a system of elections.

    NUCLEAR WEAPONS (NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY)
    Mr. Whitakerasked the Prime Minister whether he will invite President Johnson and Mr. Kosygin to meet him to review progress on international acceptance of the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty.
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend will be glad to know that some 60 States signed the Treaty on 1st July when it was opened for signature, and that more signatures are expected in the near future. We shall, of course, keep the situation under review, but I doubt whether any special steps need be taken yet.
    Mr. Whitaker: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that, unless there is multilateral disarmament by the nuclear Powers, there is unlikely to be general acceptance by non-nuclear nations of this Treaty and that we are not likely to get the essential funds for peaceful development of the world? Therefore, what steps is my right hon. Friend taking towards further general disarmament?
    The Prime Minister: The point of view expressed by my hon. Friend represents the anxiety felt by many non-nuclear States at earlier stages of the negotiation
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    of this Treaty. It was for that reason that the statement was made on behalf of the three Powers principally affected in relation to their action under the Security Council if any non-nuclear Powers were subjected to a nuclear attack. It is for that reason also that all of us welcome the new progress envisaged in the declarations by Mr. Kosygin and by President Johnson last week.
    Sir C. Osborne: Since this policy cannot succeed unless the Chinese Government become part of it and support it, could the Prime Minister tell the House of any reactions he has received from our charge d'affaires as to the Peking reaction to this proposal?
    The Prime Minister: I regret that I cannot see any evidence at all of any change of heart on the part of the Government of China. That is no reason why in the rest of the world outside China we should not do all that we can to get further advances on disarmament. Nor is it any reason why we should support a situation in which there could be a large number of other nuclear States. It is disappointing about China, but the rest of us have a duty to make progress.
    Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Does my right hon. Friend recognise that the fact that France, Brazil, India and China are not signatories to this agreement presents very serious dangers? Will he treat seriously my hon. Friend's proposal that he should turn his mind to constructive work for disarmament?
    The Prime Minister: We have been pressing some of the countries concerned very hard. France has made it clear that, while not signing the Treaty, she will follow the general policy enshrined in it. One of the disappointments is India, though one understands her anxieties. It was precisely to deal with those anxieties that the statement was made by Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union about what would happen if there were nuclear attacks on countries such as India.

    CENTRAL OFFICE OF INFORMATION
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Prime Minister whether he will abolish the Central Office of Information.
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
    Mr. Hastings: Is the Prime Minister aware that the budget of the C.O.I. is up by five times since 10 years ago and that the staff has increased by 50 per cent. over the last five years, the total salary bill now being over£2,600,000? Is it not strange that the Prime Minister, who called the profession of public relations degrading, should now head a Government who employ more P.R.O.s than any other in our history?
    The Prime Minister: The context in which I made that reference was that of illegal pressure on Members of this House to sign Amendments to the Finance Bill. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the very great work which is being done by the C.O.I. in relation to exports and of the tributes paid to the C.O.I. by the Chairman of B.E.N.C. I think that the hon. Gentleman is a member of the board of Handley Page. As such he will be aware of the very fulsome tribute paid by the board of Handley Page Ltd. to the C.O.I. for the work that it has done.
    Sir W. Bromley-Davenport—
    Hon. Members: Sit down.
    Mr. Speaker: I have called the hon. and gallant Gentleman.
    Sir W. Bromley-Davenport: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. The animal noises coming from the other side made it difficult to know whether you had.
    What on earth—[Laughter.]—he will laugh on the other side of his "kisser" when I have finished with him—what on earth is the good of maintaining this Department when no one knows better than the Prime Minister himself the old adage that any figures can be made to lie and any liar can figure?

BOOK, "SANS EVERYTHING" (REPORTS OF INQUIRIES)
The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:
Mr. ROEBUCK51. Mr. ROEBUCK to ask the Minister of Health whether he will make a further statement on the progress of the inquiries into the allegations of ill-treatment of elderly patients in hospital; and when he expects to announce the results.
The Minister of Health (Mr. Kenneth Robinson): All six committees of inquiry have now made their reports, and their findings and recommendations are published today in a Command Paper which is available in the Vote Office.
These independent committees of inquiry find most of the allegations in "Sans Everything" to be totally unfounded or grossly exaggerated. They make some criticisms of present conditions in the hospitals and suggest how they might be improved, but, in general, they report very favourably on the standard of care provided.
I deeply regret the anxieties which have been caused to patients and their relatives, to hospital staff and to the public generally by the publication, which I believe the whole House will deplore. of so many allegations which are now authoritatively discredited.
Mr. Roebuck: The results of those inquiries will be received with relief by all who have been caused a great deal of anxiety as a result of the publication of the book, "Sans Everything". Would not a great deal of time, distress and public money have been saved if those who made what are now known to be wild and irresponsible allegations had made their complaint in a proper manner, naming names and giving times, dates and places?
Can my right hon. Friend say how much the inquiries have cost the taxpayer, and what co-operation those conducting the inquiries received from those who made the unfounded allegations?
Mr. Robinson: Without notice, I cannot say what the aggregate cost of the inquiries was, but it was not inconsiderable.
I very much agree with what my hon. Friend said in the first part of his supplementary question. Those who produced and published the book were aware, long before publication, that I was very willing and ready to investigate thoroughly any allegations of ill-treatment which they might care to make. I regret to say that, in general, the committees did not have a great deal of co-operation from the authors of the book,
Mr. Dean: We are extremely glad to hear that most of the allegations have

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proved to be unfounded, and wish to pay a tribute to the staffs of the hospitals, who have worked in very difficult conditions while the inquiries have been going on.
The right hon. Gentleman has said that most of the allegations are unfounded. Presumably, that means that one or two are founded. Will he reconsider the proposal for an inspectorate, which would ensure that minimum standards are maintained and that good practices in one hospital are speedily passed on to others?
Mr. Robinson: I have an open mind on the question of an inspectorate. This is, perhaps, one of the matters which might be considered in the discussion and consideration of the Green Paper on future structure, which is shortly to be published.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said about the staffs at the hospitals, which I endorse, as the whole House does. It is true that one or two isolated incidents of ill-treatment were found. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman and the whole House read the White Paper in order to get the matter fully in perspective.
Mr. Pavitt: I join the hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Dean) in paying tribute to the staff, who have been working in very difficult circumstances. Will my right hon. Friend take it from me, as a member of the regional hospital board covering one of the areas concerned, that we are extremely glad that the charges have been found to be completely unfounded?
Will my right hon. Friend do something in regard to the Press to stop the sensational anti-National Health Service stories which gain far too much credence and cause so much distress to staff and patients alike?
Mr. Robinson: I can only say that I wish I could.
Mr. Bessell: I am most grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's statement and, in particular, for the terms in which it was couched. Will the right hon. Gentle-
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man agree that the staff at the St. Lawrence's Hospital—medical and nursing staff—are to be congratulated on the way in which they conducted themselves during the inquiry?
Mr. Robinson: Yes, Sir, but a similar tribute should be paid to the staff of the other five hospitals involved.
Dr. Summerskill: What steps does my right hon. Friend feel he can take to prevent publication of another similar book or the publication of exaggerated stories of this kind which could take place on radio or television, giving a distorted impression to the public of conditions in hospitals?
Mr. Robinson: My hon. Friend will appreciate, as we all do, that the existence of free speech allows for the abuse of free speech. I think that the publication of the White Paper should discourage anyone from making at least ill-founded and irresponsible allegations in future.
Mr. Hazell: Although I appreciate that the allegations had to be investigated, as vice-chairman of one of the regional hospital boards affected I know the tremendous strain on the administrative staff which the investigations caused. Will my right hon. Friend convey to the hospital areas concerned the appreciation of the House for the co-operation given?
Mr. Robinson: Yes, Sir, gladly. I appreciate the factors mentioned by my hon. Friend. He will appreciate, equally, that I had no option but thoroughly to investigate these allegations.

SCOTTISH AFFAIRS
Motion made, and Question put,
That the matter of Technical Education related to Further Education in Scotland, being a matter relating exclusively to Scotland, be referred to the Scottish Grand Committee for their consideration.—[Mr. Peart.]
And ten Members having risen in their places and signified their objection thereto, Mr. SPEAKER declared that the Noes had it pursuant to Standing Order No. 64 (Matters relating exclusively to Scotland).

CIGARETTES (HEALTH HAZARDS)
3.38 p.m.
Mr. Laurence Pavitt: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make it illegal to sell packets of cigarettes which are not clearly marked with a warning of the health hazards consequent upon smoking, or which contain gift coupons.
This is a Bill about health, and I wish to make clear at the outset, as I have done on other occasions, that it is not my purpose to be anti-smoking. If the tobacco industry can produce a cancer-free cigarette, I shall be delighted if all hon. Members smoke as frequently as they wish. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Pavitt: If cigars could be 10 a penny, if people would smoke pipes instead of cigarettes, I should be delighted. But I am much concerned by the growing incidence of death and illness—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members may themselves wish to bring in a Bill under the Ten Minute Rule one day. They must listen to the hon. Member who has the privilege today.
Mr. Pavitt: I am increasingly concerned with the health hazards arising from cigarette smoking, and not only the cost to the nation in terms of health, but in economic terms. I tried to persuade my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to reduce the cost of cigars and the incidence of Customs Duty on pipe tobacco, at the expense of an increase on cigarettes but I had very little success. He took an attitude not unlike that of Pontius Pilate, saying that health was not his concern but revenue was, thus washing his hands of the whole project, or, in terms of the Old Testament, saying that finance is the only god and thou shalt have no other.
The hazard to health is twofold. To a striking degree lung cancer and coronary thrombosis are becoming the scourges of the 20th century. Lung cancer is now running at an epidemic rate. During Question Time today four people will have died of lung cancer, and on average 80 people die of lung
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cancer every day. If two sightseeing coaches crashed outside in Parliament Square, and 80 people died today, the nation would be appalled and something would be done. If it happened every day for a week, so that at the end of the week 560 people were dead, the nation's conscience would be startled and it would seek to do something. But because so many deaths occur as a result of carcinoma of the lung, each isolated from the other, we do not take as much interest as we should.
The fact that between 1962 and 1964 there was a 12 per cent. increase in deaths from this cause should excite the House to take positive action about it. What should stir us more than the death of the elderly, because at three score years and ten it does not much matter what one dies of—I can say that, not yet having reached that age—is the fact that this week 20 widows will be left with young children because young husbands have died of lung cancer. On average, three people under 45 and six under 50 die from it every day.
Those are just the lung cancer figures. Professor Richard Doll estimates that of the present deaths from coronary thrombosis 10,000 can be attributed to cigarette smoking, and that the death of 15,000 sufferers from the English disease, chronic bronchitis, probably would not occur but for heavy cigarette smoking.
Therefore, I seek to introduce a Bill to do two very simple things. The first is to put a warning on the side of the packet. I sought to do so in 1964, when I brought in a similar Bill. At that time legislation was before the United States Senate, and on 27th July, 1965, this became law in the United States. I have ascertained from the tobacco manufacturing and exporting companies in this country that they are, therefore, already producing cigarette packets for export to America with either a label on the side or a special stamp with this warning.
I am under no illusion that putting this little notice on the side of the packet will make all smokers suddenly throw away their cigarettes, but it could make it clear to the class of people we are anxious to affect, young people starting the habit, that the Government takes this seriously. It would be just as much an

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earnest of seriousness as the announcement by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), when he was Minister of Health, on 7th May, 1956, more than 12 years ago, declaring the Government's policy that they hoped to reduce the incidence of illness by reducing the amount of smoking.
Clause 1 is quite simple. It is a permissive Clause very much following Section 8 of the Trade Descriptions Act, 1968. It gives my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health carte blanche to do just what he likes in this respect consistent with the best medical advice. It leaves a wide discretion, and provides that it will be an offence for people to sell goods not properly labelled.
Clause 2 is a little more controversial in that it would exclude the promotion of cigarette smoking by means of gift coupons. In 1963, the industry spent£8·75 million on coupon schemes. In1964, this rose to£10·25 million and in1965, which was the year when television advertising of cigarettes was stopped, it went up to nearly£13 million. By 1966, this had nearly doubled to£24½million. I was told this morning by one well-known tobacco firm that the estimate of the value of coupons which it made last October now reaches£32 million a year.
This is promotion on a very heavy scale. I contend that young people, particularly those starting the habit of smoking and getting married and saving for their homes, might well be influenced to keep to the habit by the gift coupons scheme. I hope that the House will acquit me of trying to be a puritan. I think that the moral argument is entirely false. There is nothing good about smoking, and there is nothing bad about it. The only thing is that one is liable to die if one does it. [An HON. MEMBER: "And you die if you do not."] I do not agree with the priggish attitude of, "I do not smoke and, therefore, I am good". That is just as false as saying, "I am more manly and virile if you see me with a cigarette in my mouth".
I hope that the argument will never be based on the question whether smoking is good or bad. We are concerned that the Health Service should save the hundreds of beds occupied by
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people coughing their hearts up because of smoking, which is expensive to the Health Service, quite apart from having other economic consequences. I estimate that the cost to the nation is£400 million more than the amount of revenue to the Chancellor of the Exchequer from his tax on cigarette and other tobacco duties.
Not only for the health and happiness of families, but the nation's well-being, should the Bill be well received by the House. It will do a useful job in the progress towards a preventive health service.
3.46 p.m.
Mr. Michael English: I do not particularly have objection to the question of advice being put on the cigarette packet, but I have strong objection to the attempt of my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) to kill two birds with one stone; to his not dealing with the issue with which he claims to be dealing; and to his raising irrelevant facts.
My hon. Friend discussed at considerable length the lung cancer statistics, and he is quite correct on those statistics. Nobody has the slightest doubt about this, but he refrained from mentioning that the total sales of cigarettes have not been influenced by coupons. Sales are considerably influenced by the price of cigarettes, whether that is affected by an increase or reduction of taxation, or an increase in the manufacturer's price, which is a small part of the cost of cigarettes.
If my hon. Friend looks at the figures of total sales of cigarettes, he will see that coupons have not influenced them particularly. I am sure that my hon. Friend has studied the statistics and that, if he wishes to look at them in detail, he will see that is the case. Therefore, merely to ban coupons would not achieve the object which my hon. Friend has in mind, of reducing the sales of cigarettes. One should inquire why their banning has been raised. There are certain people in the tobacco industry who desire the banning of coupons.
My hon. Friend should realise that there is a little more in this than merely the question of health. He quoted the statistics of the increase in expenditure on coupons. I wonder whether he would care to relate them to the increases in sales of particular companies. I wonder

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whether he would care to point out that some of the smallest companies in the industry have expenditures almost as great as the largest and that, although they have such enormous expenditures, they happen to have unsuccessful advertising campaigns. It may well be that the coupons or advertising campaigns shift trade from one company to another, but that the unsuccessful companies do not wish the coupon sort of campaign to continue.
It is quite clear that the total sales of cigarettes have been unaffected, but there has been some shift from one company to another. It is only fair to point out that there is an intra-industry dispute which my hon. Friend has not seen fit to mention.
The point, above all, is that in all this discussion there is no mention of one considerable group of people—those who are dependent upon the industry. Were my hon. Friend's theory right, were it the case that banning coupons would reduce the sales of cigarettes, would it not be right that we should consider the people dependent on the industry? Some of my hon. Friends recently voted for the nationalisation of the steel industry. So did I. We all also voted for compensation for the shareholders in the steel industry at a level which I consider to be rather high. But nobody is suggesting that if these measures were effected any compensation should be paid to shareholders in this industry.
Finally—and I feel this more than most hon. Members perhaps, because I probably have more tobacco industry employees in my constituency than anybody else—nobody is suggesting any measure of compensation to a single employee of the industry who might lose his job. I do not think that my hon. Friend's
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Measure would have this result. But if he desires this result, is it not right that he should consider what would happen if his desires were fulfilled?
If, as a country, we are to say that for the sake of the health of the people cigarette advertising should be banned, or that there should be anti-advertising of cigarettes, which may be desirable from the point of view of the country, is it not desirable that we should do as we do with other things and say, "This is in the interests of society as a whole and the particular interests affected should be compensated"? Should not the employee in the industry be compensated? He did not enter it thinking that he would be dealing out, in the words of my hon. Friend, death and destruction. He is simply earning a living. Is it not reasonable that my hon. Friend should consider the possible results of his action? I hope that the House will.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 13 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of Public Business), and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Pavitt, Sir M. Stoddart-Scott, Mr. F. Noel-Baker, Dr. John Dunwoody, Dr. Summerskill, Dr. Miller, Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie, and Sir G. Nabarro.

CIGARETTES (HEALTH HAZARDS)
Bill to make it illegal to sell packets of cigarettes which are not clearly marked with a warning of the health hazards consequent upon smoking, or which contain gift coupons, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill 192.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  RACE RELATIONS BILL
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  Mr. Speaker: I have posted up, as is my custom, the selection of Amendments. We are taking first new Clause 1 with the Amendment thereto, plus Government Amendments Nos. 1, 23, 24 and 53.

New Clause 1

  MEANING OF 'DISCRIMINATE'
  For the purpose of this Act a person discriminates against another if on the ground of colour, race or ethnic or national origins he treats that other, in any situation to which section 2, 3, 4 or 5 below applies, less favourably than he treats or would treat other persons, and in this Act references to discrimination are references to discrimination on any of those grounds.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  3.55 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. James Callaghan): I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  As you have said, Mr. Speaker, we are discussing, at the same time, the Amendment to the new Clause, in line 1, leave out from 'Act' to end of line 5 and insert:
  '"discrimination" means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour or national or ethnic origins and references to discrimination shall be construed accordingly'.
  and the following Government Amendments: No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out Clause 1.
  No. 23, in Clause 6, page 3, line 26, leave out from 'act' to end of line 27 and insert:
  'of discrimination, whether or not it'.
  No. 24, in Clause 7, page 3, line 37, after 'discriminate', insert 'against any other person'
  and No. 53, in Clause 8, page 5, line 2, after 'discriminate', insert 'against any person'.
  We had considerable discussion in Committee on this point, when I had pressure brought on me from all sides to
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  give a rather better definition of "discrimination" than was contained in Clause 1. So the purpose of the new Clause is to substitute a new Clause 1. I think that the old Clause 1 was deficient, and that the new Clause improves the situation. All that old Clause 1 did was to say that discriminate means discriminate, and that hardly seemed to be a particularly useful definition.
  The new Clause states the conditions in which a person discriminates—if on the ground of colour, race or ethnic or national origins he treats the other person in any situation to which certain sections of the Act apply less favourably —those are the operative words—than he treats or would treat other persons.
  The remaining Amendments are consequential on the new definition. I undertook to consider the possibility of finding a better definition and I indicated to the Committee what I thought it would be. The new definition that I have included is in line with the statement that I made in Committee on the manner in which I would redraft the definition.
  Mr. Quintin Hogg: I do not want unduly to take up the time of the House on this matter. I certainly do not wish to oppose the new Clause. Indeed, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, it is in line with one of the criticisms that I levelled at the definition in Committee, when I pointed out that the last definition was not a definition since it used the word "discriminate" to define the word "discriminate" in the Bill.
  But I am still disappointed with the definition Clause. I will not go into my conviction, to which I have referred on more occasions than one, that the base of the Bill is too narrow even if its scope is too wide, but I will say one thing by way of criticism which the right hon. Gentleman has not met. Although I did not make the criticism on Clause 1, I made it on several occasions afterwards in Committee. I think that the definition Clause would be better if it recognised that there was a distinction between discriminating in favour of somebody and discriminating against somebody.
  This is something that all of us tended to recognise in the course of the Committee discussions—that it was possible

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  legitimately to favour a particular minority group for which one had a particular affection—the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, or even that submerged tenth, the English, or any other minority—the effect of which was to discriminate against all other nations when one did it, and that it was possible to do this without incurring the mischiefs of the Bill.
  I know that there are difficulties—if I had seen an obvious way out of them I should have moved an Amendment—but I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of man to find one, and I still express; my disappointment that it has not so far been found.
  Mr. Ivor Richard: I do not want to seem ungracious—after all, it was my new Clause, withdrawn in Committee, which my right hon. Friend said he would consider—but, unfortunately the new Clause seems to be open to a very large objection. It would leave open to the discriminator the possibility of arguing that what he was doing was providing separate, but, in his view, equal facilities.
  We had in the new Clause that I proposed that the person who was discriminating was discriminating not only if he refused or failed to afford like treatment, but if he refused or failed to afford like treatment in like manner and on like terms that he would to other persons in like circumstances. My right hon. Friend said that he would consider that, and now he has produced this new Clause with "discrimination" defined in the words:
  "if…he treats that other…less favourably than he treats or would treat other persons".
  On that wording, it is open to an employer to have separate lavatory accommodation for blacks and whites and say, "It is of equal standard and, therefore, I am not discriminating on the wording of Clause 1.". It seems to me, therefore, that my right hon. Friend has introduced into the English law a doctrine which the Supreme Court of the United States took six years to get off the United States Statute Book—namely, that the provision of separate and equal facilities is not discrimination in English law. I would be very reluctant to believe that that is now the law in England, what it ought to be or, indeed,
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  that that is what my right hon. Friend intends by the new Clause. I hope, therefore, that to avoid this objection, which is one of substance, my right hon. Friend will say that he does not wish to introduce into the English law the doctrine of separate but equal treatment with the possibility of eventual litigation, which is enormous, because on the wording of the new Clause, it would be open to a discriminator to argue that, having provided separate but equal facilities, he is not discriminating. I cannot believe that apartheid ought to be written into the English law.
  4.0 p.m.
  Mr. John HuntI am sorry that the Home Secretary, in his introductory remarks, did not refer to the Amendment to new Clause 1 tabled in my name and the names of the hon. Members for Hampstead (Mr. Whitaker) and for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose). I was hoping that the right hon. Gentleman would say that, on reflection, having seen my Amendment, he preferred my definition to his own. But that appears not to be so.
  Mr. Callaghan: I was hoping to hear the hon. Gentleman's speech, and then perhaps the House will allow me to make a brief reply.
  Mr. Hunt: I am glad that there is still hope.
  I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that the definition which I have suggested is supported by the United Kingdom Committee for Human Rights Year and is an appropriate adaptation of the definition of "discrimination" which is given in Article 1 of the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination.
  My main objection to the new Clause is that put forward by the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard), namely, that it introduces for the first time into English law the separate but equal concept which, I believe, could establish a very dangerous and undesirable precedent. It also appears to run contrary to the like treatment principle which is the foundation of the other major Clauses of the Bill.
  If the new Clause is adopted un-amended, my fear is that all the specific

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  prohibitions of Clauses 2 to 6 will have to be construed as excluding the provision of separate but equal facilities. In housing and employment, for example, this could encourage practices verging on apartheid in this country.
  The hon. Member for Barons Court instanced the example of an employer who provides separate but equal toilet facilities. One could equally instance the provision of canteen facilities, or a local authority which provides a housing estate for coloured tenants only, but provides separate but equal accommodation in an all-white estate.
  This new Clause has some real and considerable dangers. It establishes an undesirable principle which should be deplored. The alternative which I suggest to the Home Secretary's proposal embodies a clear and concise definition of "discrimination" and, because its phrasing is similar to that used in the United Nations Convention, it will help to provide an early opportunity for Parliament to ratify that Convention. The Home Secretary knows that the ratification of the United Nations Convention is one of the main objectives of Human Rights Year, to which all parties in the House have given their support.
  For the reasons which I have outlined, I hope, even at this late stage, that the Home Secretary will have second thoughts and that, when he returns to the Dispatch Box, he will say that, on balance, he prefers my definition to his own.
  Dr. David Kerr: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, you will forgive me if my hearing is terrible, but I understood you to say that we were also considering the Amendment. I have not heard the hon. Gentleman move the Amendment formally. I wondered whether this was in order.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is quite right. He has not heard the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) move the Amendment, because the hon. Member knew that he was not entitled to move it.
  Mr. Paul B. Rose: I rise briefly to support the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) in speaking to his Amendment to the new Clause, not merely because it is based
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  upon the definition of "discrimination" given in Article 1 of the United Nations International Convention, but because I am not convinced that the new Clause proposed by my right hon. Friend meets the practical points made in Committee by various hon. Members, not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard).
  I should like to see the United Nations form of wording enshrined in a Bill which is particularly appropriate to Human Rights Year. I am concerned about the term "not less favourable treatment", because the doctrine of apartheid, at least in theory though not in practice, is based upon the principle and philosophy of separate but equal. It is a principle which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court said, found favour over many years in the United States Supreme Court. "Like treatment" and "not less favourable treatment" are different, and I cannot understand this sudden lurching off into an unexplored alleyway in the law, an alleyway which is fraught with a great number of dangers. The main danger is that segregated but no less favourable facilities could be provided under this form of wording. Mention has been made of some examples. One might have white and coloured sections in restaurants or canteens, in buses, or in the allocation of housing on a housing estate under this form of wording.
  My right hon. Friend seemed persuaded by the strength of the arguments put forward in Committee. He recognised the desirability of a definition Clause. I am sure that my right hon. Friend has done his best to meet the wishes of the Committee, but, unfortunately, he seems to have caused universal dismay to those most concerned with race relations, not least among those whom we are seeking to help by the Bill. I think that my right hon. Friend can put this error right today by accepting the Amendment of the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt), which is supported by the United Nations Association Working Committee on Human Rights.
  If my right hon. Friend is not prepared at short notice to do this, I would accept an undertaking on his part that when the Bill gets to another place an attempt will be made to find a form of wording which meets the points made in Committee and the point emphasised by

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  my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court on the great dangers of the separate but equal principle. This raises a point of real difficulty and substance. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend will deal with it accordingly.
  Dame Joan Vickers: I am disappointed to see that the word "sex" is not in either the new Clause or my hon Friend's Amendment. It appears now that the only persons who will be discriminated against in the apartheid section are women, who have recently been involved in the trouble over the employment of women bus drivers. A woman recently passed her driving test to become a bus driver, but the trade unions and other members of the local bus association said that they would strike if she was allowed to drive buses. Therefore, in this Year of Human Rights, if we are to discriminate we should not discriminate against women. Apparently women will be the only people now left in the country who will be discriminated against.
  Mr. Speaker: Order, we are not debating whom we discriminate against. We are debating two possible ways of defining "discrimination".
  Dame Joan Vickers: I am suggesting that neither the new Clause nor the Amendment fulfil what I wish, Mr. Speaker. I suggest that "discrimination" is not adequately described, because it still discriminates against women.
  I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the new Clause and the Amendment and to put in the word "sex" so that women will not be discriminated against in future. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider this seriously, because it is becoming a major problem. As the right hon. Gentleman knows from the various strikes that have taken place recently, women are becoming very militant.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. With respect, we are discussing a proposed new Clause, a proposed Amendment thereto, and in neither does the word "sex" appear.
  Dame Joan Vickers: That is exactly what I was protesting against, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Eric S. Heftier: If I thought that my right hon. Friend was introducing a Clause which meant
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  separate but equal treatment I should be the first to vote against it, but I think that some of my hon. Friends, and some hon. Gentlemen opposite, are reading into the Clause far more than exists. The whole idea of the Bill is to do away with racial discrimination. It is, therefore, ludicrous to suggest that my right hon. Friend is introducing a Clause which, while laying down what is meant by discrimination, results in discrimination which does not exist now.
  I understand that most hon. Members who are concerned about the Clause are members of the legal profession. I was a member of the Committee which considered the Bill. They were many lengthy debates and arguments, and it was amazing how confused my hon. Friends and others became over the various legal definitions advanced by members of the legal profession. Lay members found it difficult to get to grips with their arguments.
  I think that my hon. Friends are overlooking the reference in the Clauses to Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5, which contain the words which my hon. Friends say ought to be in this Clause. For example, Clause 2 contains the phrase:
  "…to provide him with goods, services or facilities of the like quality, in the like manner and on the like terms…"
  Clause 3, which deals with employment, refers to:
  "like terms of employment, the like conditions of work and the like opportunities for training and promotion…"
  The words "like terms" are used in Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5. If my hon. Friends have not got beyond the definition in the new Clause, I suggest that they go on to read the other parts of the Bill which provide for exactly what my hon. Friends want.
  I agree that there is always a danger of some local authorities going out of their way to discriminate in housing and other matters. This is precisely what we must ensure does not happen. It is not happening now. If I believed that we were laying down a principle of "separate but equal", a principle which was adopted in the United States with disastrous consequences, I should oppose the Clause, but I do not believe that is what is being done. I think that my hon. Friends should reconsider this and

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  not, as I think they are doing on this occasion, see something which is not there, but which perhaps some of them would like to see because they believe that the Government are constantly backtracking in this matter.
  4.15 p.m.
  Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas: There is only one thing worse than a lack of definition, and that is a misleading and ambiguous one. I fear that the Home Secretary has escaped from one trap only to fall into a worse one. This definition, however unintentional, is clearly capable of being interpreted in a separate but equal manner. That is the interpretation which has been placed on it by leading organisations dealing with race relations, and by distinguished Members of the House.
  If the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) says that it is ludicrous to think that the Home Secretary intended to introduce into the Bill such a notion or definition of discriminaion, I say to him that it is not the intention of the Home Secretary that matters, but the words in the Statute.
  In that respect, my mind goes back to the Obscene Publications Act, 1859.
  Mr. Hogg: Does not my hon. Friend mean 1959?
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: No. My mind has gone back further than has my right hon. and learned Friend's.
  During the debate on that Act the point was made that the destruction order procedure which was then authorised could be used against works of literature. I believe that it was Lord Lyndhurst who pointed that out, and the then Attorney-General gave a guarantee that it was not his intention; but the Act was used in that manner. The danger is that in future the Bill now before us will be interpreted in the way that my hon. Friend's definition is intended to avoid.
  There are two points to be made in reply to what the hon. Member for Walton said about the contrary wording in Clauses 2, 3 and 4. First, the definition in Clause 1 will govern the interpretation of the wording in those Clauses. If there is a conflict, the Interpretation Clause must prevail. But even so, it
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  surely cannot be a wise move in legislation of this kind to start by introducing what must, at best, be an ambiguity and oreate confusion right from the outset.
  Mr. Heffer: Is it not clear that the interpretation in Clause 1 refers to Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5?
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: I wish that I could say that that was clear. It may be clear to the hon. Gentleman, but it is not clear to me. In a Measure where there is a great deal of confusion, this is adding a further and gratuitous piece of confusion.
  My hon. Friend's Amendment has the great merit of clarity and puts the point beyond doubt. I therefore hope that when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will say that he will reconsider the wording of the Clause, and that if the Bill reaches another place—I shall not say "when", as one hon. Member said—the matter will have been considered by the Home Office so that the appropriate wording can be introduced then.
  Sir Barnett Janner: I, too, am worried about the Clause, for reasons similar to those expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard). I do not think that my right hon. Friend intends to define "discrimination" any differently from the definition in the Amendment to the Clause. In my view, the alternative definition suggested by the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) and others has been accepted as being in line with the Declaration of the United Nations.
  I have had the unhappy experience of being obstructed time and again over the years whenever I have suggested that the Government should accede to the Genocide Convention. I have always been told that it is necessary to alter the law of our country to enable us to accede to that Convention. Despite the fact that everybody agrees with its terms, the Convention cannot be ratified until the position has been cleared and the red tape of the law has been cut.
  I am worried because in this Year of Human Rights a reasonable request will be made to us to accept the Declaration of Human Rights in respect of discrimination. Whatever hon. Members may

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  want, if we are to have a Measure of this nature its terms should be clear. The Amendment to the new Clause is clear and concise and I hope that my right hon. Friend will accept it and so not only avoid legal disputes elsewhere as to what the Clause means, but also be in a position later to accept the proposal that we should ratify the Declaration of Human Rights.
  Sir Derek Walker-Smith: I rise briefly to make it clear that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) is not engaged in a, so to speak, lone foray in upholding the layman against the lawyer. There is much substance in the point that he made. It is necessary to see what unlawful acts are committed, and to see that we have to go to specific Clauses, as defined in the new Clause.
  For example, Clause 2 refers to discrimination against a person
  "by refusing or neglecting to provide him with any of them or to provide him with goods, services, or facilities of the like quality, in the like manner and on the like terms in and on which the former normally makes them available to other members of the public."
  To constitute an unlawful act, that must be established. No general words can derogate from the precise effect of those special words.
  I have many criticisms of the drafting of the Bill, but this is not one of them. I submit that the position is as put by the hon. Member for Walton and that the misgivings which have been expressed are unfounded, although genuine.
  Mr. David Weitzman: I am sorry that my right hon. Friend has put down the new Clause. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), I think that it was absolutely unnecessary. I hope that I shall be forgiven, as another lawyer who was not on the Committee, for intervening and expressing a view. I carefully read all the speeches made in Committee on the new Clause moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard). I thought that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made an excellent speech, showing how totally unnecessary the present new Clause was.
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  What do the new Clause and the Amendment do? The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) talked about "discriminating against" and "discriminating for", but the words in Clauses 1 and 2 are quite clear. The offence is that of discriminating against. There is no doubt about that. In Clause 2(1), we find the grounds on which discrimination may be exercised. What can be clearer than the simple words that are already in the Bill, namely, that the offence here is discrimination against, on the grounds set out? What do the new Clause and the Amendment add to it?
  Hon. Members should examine the words of the new Clause and the Amendment. Do they make any difference to the present wording? The danger is that if we include words which are completely unnecessary we are providing scope for arguments being put forward against what the Bill really means. I ask my right hon. Friend to stick to his original view and not be tempted by what has been put forward in an Amendment to his new Clause, which is itself absolutely unnecessary.
  Dr. M. P. Winstanley: I am inclined to support the view of those who have said that the fears of the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) and the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) are unjustified. But if it should prove to be the case that the new Clause could have the meaning attributed to it, namely, that it in some way underlines, supports or sanctions segregation, I hope that before we end this discussion we shall hear the right hon. and learned Attorney-General saying that it does not have the meaning attributed to it, or the Home Secretary saying that he will do something about it.
  I am one of those who criticised the original definition, and I pay tribute to the Home Secretary for doing something about it. I am inclined to share the view expressed today by the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Sir B. Janner) and by the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) in Committee that it would have been nice if the Home Secretary had been able to bring forward a definition which embraced religion, sex, and so on, but the Long Title does not permit that to be done.

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  Nevertheless, we have had the assurance from the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone that he feels so strongly about the matter that if he should ever be in charge of these matters in future he will bring in another Bill. I hope that we may hear from the Home Secretary that he will also consider bringing in another Bill if necessary.
  My reason for speaking now is that the discussion which took place in Committee on the question of the definition embraced both Clause 1 and Clause 2. Clause 2 goes on to define unlawful discrimination, while Clause 1 gives the general definition of discrimination. It was inevitable that the general discussion in Committee should embrace both Clauses.
  My anxiety in Committee was related to the words "normal" and "normally". I realise that this question may be debated when we reached Amendment No. 6, and I do not want to anticipate that debate, but since it is bound up with the question of definition I hope that the Home Secretary will say something about the new definition either now or later, because the word "normal" is unsatisfactory. What is normal is not necessarily average, and what is average is not necessarily normal. There is much confusion about what is usual or normal. I get this point arising constantly in medical matters. I am asked, "Is this thing normal?" I say, "Yes, it is quite normal, but it is not common." It might be right for me to say that the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone is unusual. He would not object to that, although he might object if I said that he was abnormal.
  I hope that the Home Secretary will be able to refer to this point of definition either now or later.
  4.30 p.m.
  Mr. Raphael Tuck: I support the Amendment. I take issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), who said that a layman can understand the Bill. I would remind him that the words in the Statute will be interpreted by the people whom he calls lawyers. By that time they will be called judges. They will interpret the Measure. They will interpret it not necessarily according to the inten-
  236
  tion, but according to the literal interpretation of the Measure.
  I am sure that it is not the intention of the Home Secretary to bedevil the issue by loading it up with terms which may be construed in a manner which we would consider to be bad.
  Mr. Weitzman: Would my hon. Friend care to say what difference the Amendment would make to the original words of the provision?
  Mr. Tuck: The difference is the need to overcome the concept of separate but equal facilities. Although Clauses 2, 3 and 4 seem quite precise, we must make the lead into them more precise. Clause 1, as drafted, which says that
  "In this Act 'discriminate' means discriminate on…"
  is not precise enough because it introduces into the definition of the word "discriminate" the word "discriminate".
  I appeal to the Home Secretary to give close consideration to the Amendment, which is concise and precise, whereas the definition in the new Clause is somewhat vague.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: No hon. Member who took part in the Committee deliberations can doubt the need for some definition in this matter. It therefore seems hard on the Home Secretary that, having come forward with a definition, he should be condemned for doing so. I find his definition in the new Clause helpful and, while it does not go all the way, I must support the right hon. Gentleman.
  The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) raised a red herring in talking about the whole question of separate but equal. He knows as well as I do that subsequent American judicial decisions discovered that if it was separate, it was not equal. Plainly, if it is not equal it is less favourable.
  I am not sure what is the Conservative equivalent of a red herring—unless it is a blue trout or a white sole—but I am satisfied that the phrase "less favourable" has the merit of being understandable to the ordinary person. We all agree that if the Bill is to work it must be understood by the public and be seen to make sense to them. "Less favourable" is clear and we all know what is less favourable.
  Mr. St. John-Stevas: I agree that the Measure must be comprehensible to the public. Even more important, it must be interpreted by the judges. Thus, the wording should not be ambiguous and allow for different interpretations being given by different judges.
  Mr. Griffiths: My hon. Friend is underlying the point made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer). He is suggesting that judges are less capable of understanding the English language than the ordinary citizen. "Less favourable" is satisfactory. It is simple, comprehensible and it places the burden of proof where it should be; on the complainant, who must show that he is being treated worse, less favourably, than someone else on grounds of race or colour.
  Mr. R. T. Paget: If, at a wedding, the bride's relations are put on one side and the bridegroom's on the other, that cannot be said to be treating them less favourably, although they are being treated differently. However, if one puts all the blacks on one side and all the whites on the other, would not the same argument apply? This being so, would it not be better merely to refer to "differently"?
  Mr. Griffiths: It is reasonable that the House should outlaw acts which are less favourable on grounds of colour, and so on. I would not be in favour of outlawing acts which are different. Acts which are less favourable are those to which I am referring and with which I am mainly concerned.
  Mr. Tuck: Would the hon. Gentleman agree to having one section of a bus for blacks and one for whites, or one section of a restaurant for blacks and another for whites, provided that they were equal?
  Mr. Griffiths: I thought that I had dealt with that in explaining that it was clearly accepted in the United States—and I imagine that we would follow in this matter—that if it was separate it was not equal and that if it was not equal it was less favourable. That seems to be entirely watertight.
  I cannot support the Amendment because it seems unreasonable to say that there should be no different treatment on grounds of preference. I propose to go
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  on preferring many people on grounds of national or ethnic origin. Preference should not be outlawed in this country and I hope that it never will be. What I wish to see outlawed is less favourable treatment on grounds of race or ethnic origin, but certainly not in connection with preference. I am glad that the Home Secretary has introduced the new Clause which, while it may not go all the way, will be of great help.
  Mr. Stanley Orme: Having heard my right hon. Friend introduce the new Clause—which, I understand, is designed to meet certain objections voiced in Committee and to define thet matter more precisely—and having heard the lawyers have a go—they have put three different interpretations on both the Clause and the Amendment—I suggest that it might be better to return to the original definition in the Bill, since that might, after all, specify the later Clauses more clearly.
  As drafted, Clause 1 says:
  "In this Act 'discriminate' means discriminate on the ground of colour, race or ethnic or national origins, and references to discrimination shall be construed accordingly."
  While my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) said that that did not define the matter clearly, I suggest that the subsequent Clauses go on to define it. Does not that overcome the objection? My hon. Friend went on to mention the different interpretations which lawyers could place on the phrase "less favourable", but that must be read in the context of the whole provision in which it appears.
  The Home Secretary has tried to meet the wishes of the Committee. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) said that no suitable form of words had yet been found. Presumably he has not found a suitable form of words and I suggest, therefore, that we accept a form of words which is understandable to the general public and in common law.
  Sir B. Janner: Would my hon. Friend indicate his objection to the Amendment? He has not dealt with that.
  Mr. Orme: I have read the Amendment, which takes the definition further than the original definition in the Bill. I have no objection to that, but if my right hon. Friend is not prepared to

  239
  accept it the safest procedure is to drop the new Clause and to return to the original definition.
  Mr. Tuck: My hon. Friend described the original definition as precise and clear. Does he not realise that the original definition uses the words which it seeks to define?
  Mr. Orme: My hon. Friend is giving another lawyer's interpretation. There is no difference between us on what we want to achieve. It is obvious from what has been said that we shall not get an ideal set of words providing a definition which is acceptable and not open to various interpreations in law. If we are not to get such a clear definition, then I suggest to my right hon. Friend that he would best meet the point by using the original form of words, backed by specific instances in relation to housing and employment, for example.
  Mr. Callaghan: We have had a full discussion on this subject, and I do not think that any new points are now being made. I hope that I may say that without it being taken as offensive. We are treading the same ground time and again. It is not my intention to join in the game of hunting the under-privileged lawyers in the House. They rarely agree about the construction of words. Whenever two lawyers are gathered together, one can always get three opinions.
  It is my task to make the words clear both for the benefit of the judges who have to interpret the definition and also for the sake of the Race Relations Board and the ordinary citizen. The important part of the Bill is that concerned with the conciliation process and the process of understanding which the ordinary citizen must apply. I trust that the number of cases which judges will have to try, in which they will be interpreting the exact syntax of what the House of Commons laid down, will be infinitesimal.
  At one point in the debate I was inclined to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) and to feel that perhaps I should have left it alone. In fact, I was trying to meet the convenience of the Committee, for I was asked whether I would bring in a better definition. I suppose I should have known better than to bring in
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  another definition for that was to invite a great deal more controversy.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) should know me well enough to realise that if I thought that this was a proposal which would make separate but equal treatment lawful, I should not have brought it forward. I have made sufficient speeches on that subject and my attitude should be sufficiently well known for hon. Members to realise that I would not be in that position. My hon. Friend may argue, "But you are such a simple chap that you do not understand it. Although you have the best will in the world, it is not your intentions which count, but your words, and they create a loophole for the establishment of separate but equal facilities." That is the argument advanced by a number of hon. Members, although others have taken a different view.
  My advice is that no loophole is created by the new Clause as drafted. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) pointed out, reinforced by other hon. Members, one has to read the Clause in conjunction with the other Clauses. If hon. Members will stop their reading at the new Clause, and do not read on to the other Clauses, then I agree that there might be a problem. If a learned judge were to stop in that way, then I agree that it is just conceivable that in certain circumstances, late on a Friday afternoon, he might construe these words in the manner suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court. But he could not construe them in that way if he read them in conjunction with Clauses 2 to 5, as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Walton.
  It seemed to me that my hon. Friend was qualifying for elevation very rapidly to the bench by the way in which he seized on the nub of the argument. It is quite clear from the Bill, from Clause after Clause, that it must be "in like manner" and "in like circumstances". The argument put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court will not support the proposition that the provision of separate facilities would be legal under the Bill.
  4.45 p.m.
  Mr. Richard: I should not dream of suggesting that my right hon. Friend was

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  either simple or a racialist. But I should like to put a serious point to him which I hope he will consider seriously. If discrimination, as he defines it, might allow for separate but equal treatment, perhaps the Attorney-General, or someone else legally qualified, would consider the situation under Clause 3 (l)(c), dealing with employment. Provided that the employer offers a black man and a white man like terms of employment, under the definition of discrimination which my right hon. Friend is introducing, might he not provide for separate but equal sanitary, toilet and canteen facilities, and might not that be permissible under the Bill? That is a serious point, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will consider it seriously.
  Mr. Callaghan: My hon. Friend repeats the argument without adding to it. I have stated the conclusion which I have reached on the matter. It would be so foreign and contrary to the whole spirit of the Bill if such a defence were brought forward, if such a case ever got as far as the courts, that I would expect the courts to reject a defence against a complaint of unlawful discrimination if it were based on those grounds. I would certainly expect the Race Relations Board to do so.
  I believe that my hon. Friend is spinning out words which, in fact, do not carry the weight which my hon. Friend is endeavouring to place upon them. But if, by the remotest chance, my hon. Friend proves to be right—and I am willing to have a modest bet with him that he will not—I think that any Government—a Government of right hon. Gentlemen opposite or the present Government—would clearly want to put that situation right. But I do not believe that that is likely to arise, because it is imperative to read the other Clauses in conjunction with this Clause.
  May I take up the point made by the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt), my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, North-West (Sir B. Janner) and others in relation to the Human Rights Convention? Our definition is based on the terms of the then draft of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination. The original draft in the Human Rights Convention is the same as our definition, and it was that definition which was
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  carried into the 1965 Act. Subsequently, the definition in the Convention of 7th March, 1966, on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination was altered. What we have decided is to carry forward the definition which was used in the 1965 Act, based, as it was, on the original United Nations Convention, rather than to introduce the new definition agreed by the United Nations Convention.
  The important point is whether the words which we use would prevent us from ratifying the United Nations Convention. These, again, are like the words we have been discussing. This is a drafting provision to give a different definition to the word "discrimination", but I assure the House that it will have no effect, in our view, on the ability of the United Kingdom to ratify the Convention.
  The decision on ratification was deferred only until the form of this legislation had been agreed, and, once the Bill is passed, ratification will be reconsidered. There are still some difficulties which lie outside the scope of the Bill in relation to some overseas territory, but it would not be proper for me to go into them now. But as far as United Kingdom legislation is concerned, the Bill opens the way to ratification as soon as possible, subject to those other difficulties being removed.
  On these counts, I hope that the House is inclined to agree that I have tried to meet the case for an expanded definition. Although hon. Members may hold the view that, drafted in a different way, it might be even better, I hope that they will allow me to have the definition and move on.
  Mr. Paget: If, to consider what the definition means, one has to look at the Clause, what is the point of having a definition? When the object of the definition is to tell one what the Clause is, surely one is better without one or the other.
  Mr. Callaghan: The one is stated in general and the rest are stated in particular in relation to the various aspects covered by the Bill—provision of goods, employment, trade unions, employers' organisations, housing accommodation, advertisements and notices. Clauses 2

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  to 6 spell out Clause 1. That does not seem to me to be a bad thing.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 2

  CHARITIES AND ACTS DONE FOR CHARITABLE PURPOSES
  (1) Nothing in this Part of this Act shall—

  (a) be construed as affecting any future charitable instrument having as its main object the conferring of benefits on persons of a particular race, particular descent or particular ethnic or national origins; or

  (b) render unlawful an act which is done in order to comply with the provisions of any such instrument or of any existing charitable instrument of any description.

  (2) In this section 'charitable instrument' means an enactment passed or instrument made for purposes which are exclusively charitable according to the law of England and Wales and 'future instrument' and 'existing instrument' mean respectively an instrument taking effect after, and an instrument taking effect before, the commencement of this Act.—[The Attorney-General.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  The Attorney-General (Sir Elwyn Jones): I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  The purpose of this Clause, which is in substitution for Clause 9 of the Bill, is to extend the protection afforded by that Clause to certain charitable dispositions taking effect in future as well as in the past. The House will see that the existing Clause 9 provides that nothing in Part 1 of the Bill is to render unlawful an act done in order to comply with the provisions of any enactment passed or other instrument made for charitable purposes and taking effect before the passing of the Bill.
  I recall to the House the reason for the Clause. There are many charitable trusts which restrict the dispositions which can be made under them to beneficiaries of a particular category, whether by reference to residence, nationality, country of origin, or in some other way as scholarships for the sons of Welsh clergymen, for instance, or almshouses for elderly Scotsmen. To comply with the terms of the trust, it is inevitable that the trustees should have to refuse
  244
  application from persons who do not fall within the specified category, and it could mean that they would be contravening the provisions of the Bill by turning away people on grounds that, because of race, they were ineligible under the terms of the trust instrument.
  My right hon. Friend and I decided that it would be unreasonable to put a person in the position of having to choose between acting unlawfully and in a way contrary to the terms of the trust or other instrument which had been made and which had come into effect before the Bill was passed. But we took the view that, for the future, instruments setting up charitable trusts should be drawn in such a way, as not to require persons acting in pursuance of them to discriminate between one group and another.
  For this reason, the protection afforded by the Clause was restricted to instruments made and taking effect before the passing of the Bill. But this, of course, left no protection for future charitable dispositions of a kind which most people would consider to be deserving of protection.
  One example mentioned in Committee was the establishment by a rich Pakistani of a school for Pakistani children. Although in terms in favour of one group, its effect would be to discriminate against all other groups and the head teacher of such a school who turned away an English child would be liable to the charge that he was discriminating on ground of race. The matter was discussed in Committee on the basis of an Amendment put forward by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), who sought to extend the protection to acts done in fulfilment of the objectives of any organisation established for charitable purposes whether the organisation was established before or after the coming into force of the Bill.
  Since that date we have, as we undertook, given further thought to the matter. I agree that the Clause 9 is unsatisfactory as it stands. But, in my view, we should not go as far as the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposed. As I see it, his Amendment would have had the effect of protecting a charitable disposition drawn up for the benefit of all

  245
  persons save, say, those coloured or of a particular nationality, and I am sure that he would not find that position attractive and that he would seek to avoid it.
  But ray right hon. Friend and I are certainly sympathetic to the view that, in seeking to outlaw discrimination in charitable activities for the future, we should not in doing so inhibit the setting up of charities which, although they may have a discriminatory element, nevertheless are for the benefit of sections of the community deserving of benefit and for purposes deserving of encouragement.
  Accordingly, the new Clause, while reproducing the effect of the present Clause 9, goes further in that, with respect to charitable instruments taking effect after the commencement of the Act, it protects such instruments and acts done in order to comply with them if they are instruments having as their main objective the conferring of benefits on persons of a particular race, particular descent or of particular ethnic or national origin.
  This will, I hope, cover cases of the kind referred to in Committee—for instance, schools for the education of Frenchmen, homes for elderly Jews, trusts in favour of future immigrants from Pakistan. But it will not protect instruments intended to exclude particular sections of the community on the grounds of race, colour and so on. I hope that the House, and, in particular, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, will feel that the Government have gone the whole way to meet the substance of the criticisms of the Clause as it stands and that new Clause 2 will be accepted in substitution.
  Sir David Renton: I express my gratitude to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General not only for the clear explanation he has given, but for the great amount of thought and consideration he has given to the matter in reaching the conclusion which is contained in new Clause 2. What it comes to is that, in future charitable instruments;, it would be legitimate to discriminate in favour but not legitimate to discriminate against. That is a wise and satisfactory solution, and I am grateful for it.
  Sir B. Janner: I, too, congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General on the manner in which he has been able to devise a very useful Clause to meet what appeared to many of us as a serious objection to the original Clause. A large number of organisations will now be able to continue their activities—or, rather, to create new activities—in a manner similar to the methods used before.
  In addition, if new Clause 2 had not been introduced there would have been a disincentive to many people who are charitably disposed. They might have been dissuaded from introducing charitable provisions for the benefit of a large number of people. We are grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend and thank him very much.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 4

  INVESTIGATION PROCEDURE
  (1) Whereby virtue of the provisions of section 14, 15 or 16 of, or Schedule 2 to, this Act, an investigation is being carried out by the Board or by a conciliation committee or by any body of persons to whom such investigation has been referred, any person who willfully and unreasonably refuses or neglects to provide any material information or to answer any material question or to disclose any material document upon being requested in writing so to do either by the Board or by a conciliation committee or by any such body as aforesaid with the authority in writing of the Board shall be guilty of an offence under this section.
  (2) Any person who in the course or for the purpose of any such investigation as aforesaid wilfully gives false information to either the Board or a concilation committee of any such body as aforesaid shall be guilty of an offence under this section.
  (3) Any person who wilfully and unreasonably obstructs or threatens to obstruct or does any act calculated to obstruct either any investigation by the Board or by a conciliation committee or by any such body as aforesaid or the provision by any person in the course of any such investigation of any material information or the answering of any material question or the disclosure of any material document shall be guilty of an offence under this section.
  (4) The penalty for an offence under this section shall be a fine not exceeding£100 or imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months, or both; or, in the case of a second or subsequent offence, a fine not exceeding £250

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  or imprisonment for a period not exceeding twelve months, or both.—[Mr. Alexander W. Lyon.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  5.0 p.m.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  I understand that with this Clause we are to discuss new Clause 3—"Enlarged definition of discrimination".
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): That is so.
  Mr. Lyon: I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for reversing his original selection, because, although the two Clauses apply to different problems, that to which Clause 4 relates is far more important. It relates to one of the principal weaknesses of the Bill which has been widely commented upon and upon which we had a good deal of discussion in Committee. Varous ways of trying to improve the Bill to remedy this weakness were suggested in Committee.
  The weakness to which I refer is that in fulfilling its obligations to investigate an alleged act of discrimination the Race Relations Board will have no power under the Bill to compel anyone to give evidence to it, to produce papers, or to furnish information upon which to make any rational judgment about whether discrimination has taken place. In Committee, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and, even more, the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) made great play with the comparison of the police investigating serious offences, even murder, being unable to compel witnesses to give information if the witnesses refused to do so.
  This analogy was always wrong. The Board will not be in the position of a policeman in the exercise of its functions. Of course, it is an enforcement agency, but it is more. In the nature of most cases of discrimination, the Board will be a court itself. It will have to decide whether there has been discrimination and to do so it will have to take evidence from both parties involved about the alleged act of discrimination.
  It is true that by later Amendments in Committee my right hon. Friend changed the phrase from "making a determina-
  248
  tion" to simply "forming an opinion", and it will, therefore, be possible for the Board simply to reach a prima facie opinion that discrimination has occurred. That would not in any sense be a final determination of the matter. But to do that it will have to have the necessary information, and the weakness of the Bill as it stands is not that it denies the Board powers which the police do not have, but that it will mean that inevitably the Board will have to send more cases to court.
  I thought that we were all agreed that the fewer the cases which went to court, the better. The object of the procedure is to conciliate and not to enforce. Therefore we are all trying to create conditions in which fewer cases will go to court. But if the Board cannot obtain the evidence to determine whether there has been discrimination and the only evidence before it is a complaint by the person who is alleged to have been discriminated against, the Board must form a prime facie opinion that there has been discrimination and it must send the case to court.
  Therefore, the objective, which was eschewed by my right hon. Friend in Committee, of bringing enforcement too much into the proceedings will be achieved by this weakness in the Bill. The only way of conciliating in the end will be to take the acrimonious parties to court. I would not want that and I do not think that the Home Secretary would, and I therefore ask him again to consider this weakness.
  The new Clause was devised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. S. C. Silkin), who, unfortunately, cannot be here to move it today. It is a new device from those suggested in Committee and from those urged by the Board. It creates a criminal offence. I would have preferred the Amendment which I moved in Committee, but, that having now passed, I hope that the Government will accept the new Clause.
  I do not think that there is any secret about the fact that one of my right hon. Friend's concerns at that stage was that if his concession were made on a matter thought by the Board to be important, that would in some way militate against

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  the acceptance of the Bill by the Opposition. We have now reached the stage when the Opposition have clearly determined not to support the Third Reading. Surely we should now determine to get the best Bill possible with the support of this side of the House.
  I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will be less intransigent about this matter than he was in Committee. If he feels that the Clause is not the right way in which to deal with the weakness, I would be happy to accept an assurance that the matter would be dealt with before the Bill reached another place. However, I hope that in response to all the criticism from all informed sources about race relations, not least the Board, and in view of the experience in America, where this weakness has been proved over and over again in those States which have no power to get witnesses or documents before a similar conciliation committee, my right hon. Friend will yield.
  Mr. Paget: I regarded on Second Reading, and I still regard, this proposal as possibly the most important if the Bill is to be effective. In Committee, my right hon. Friend took the view that the Race Relations Board could not be given powers which were not given to the courts even in cases of the most serious crimes. That is a misunderstanding of the situation. It is a very ancient tradition—we might have to consider it, but it is none the less very ancient—that no man should be compelled to incriminate himself; that is to say, he should not be compelled to give evidence which would show that he had committed a crime, or, though this is subject to considerable limitations, to produce documents which incriminate him. He can decline to do so on that ground.
  But we have not created a crime here. We have not said in the Bill that discrimination is a crime. We have expressly declined to do so. When one is not dealing with crime, any man may be compelled to give evidence against himself. In any civil proceedings, for libel or otherwise, one may call one's opponent and put him in the witness box, where he is bound to answer any questions dealing with the case.
  Equally, by the process of discovery, one can compel him to produce all the relevant documents. It is not only in a
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  court of law that one can do this. Under the Arbitration Act an arbitrator can do it. Why, then, not the Board? The Board is considering matters which are expressly not criminal, which are to be dealt with in a civil fashion. Why deny it the procedures and facilities which are usual in the investigation of civil matters?
  So much for what seem to be the main argument advanced against this proposal. Now to the argument for it, which is based on something else. I will not go into this at any length, but I do not think that the injunction system will work. This is very largely because the courts will be very loath to make injunctions, the performance of which they are not in a position to supervise. This has always been the tradition of the courts—very loath to grant injunctions which are enforced by committal to prison unless the definition can be complete, unless the performance can be supervised by court.
  That will mean that the cases become far more constricted than we would wish. Secondly, I do not believe that a procedure for damages in which damages are paid to an injured party, but the complaint can only be brought by someone else, is a system which will work very satisfactorily in practice. The real sanction to this discrimination legislation will not be the result of an inquiry, but the inquiry itself. One has to carry public opinion, and on the whole one does. People may be against foreigners coming here, against coloured people, but they feel that if they do come here it is decent to treat them equally. That is the general feeling, and people do not like being exposed for not doing so.
  They do not want to be put in the witness box and have questions put to them, questions showing them to have been rather mean, perhaps prevaricating and lying fellows. They do not like that, and least of all do they like people going into their business, going through their business and investigating how it is conducted. That is the effective sanction.
  The main purpose of the Board is conciliation, but behind that there must be the ultimate sanction. The effective sanction to my mind is stage 2—"If we cannot agree we will have to have an investigation.…if you will not answer these questions and discuss it sensibly you will have to answer it in the witness box, with the Press there and everyone

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  else…we will have to look at your books." This seems to be the most effective sanction, and that is why I hope that my right hon. Friend will look favourably at this new Clause.
  5.15 p.m.
  Mr. Hogg: I must make it clear that whoever else is against this new Clause, I am against it. I hope that my hon. Friends will be as firmly against it as I am. I regard it as wholly illogical—it is the ultimate lunacy to which the extreme enthusiasts of this Bill would seek to lead us. It would destroy any hope that the Board would command the support of the public.
  Let me deal first with the speech of the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon). He began by seeking to show that the Race Relations Board is a court. That is exactly what it is not. It is not designed as a court. If it were a court, it would be acting and proceeding at every stage contrary to natural justice, and the proposal to arm it with the capacity to create a criminal offence is to turn it into an inquisition. That is exactly what the worst enemy of the Bill would wish to do if he wanted to discredit it with the public. We must clearly understand what the Bill envisages to be the function of the Race Relations Board. There can be no doubt about this under the Bill as it stands.
  Whether one agrees with the Bill, or opposes it, or whether one tries to examine it, as I tried to do, in an objective way, it is clear that its functions are twofold. The first is conciliation and that, by consent, is the result that one most desires to achieve, if the Bill becomes law. The second function is to be an enforcement body. It achieves the first function by conversations and seeking to obtain assurances, and by obtaining voluntarily information from the parties. Its value very largely depends upon its capacity to acquire information voluntarily, and its functions as an enforcement body depend upon its capacity to bring proceedings for enforcement before a properly constituted court in public.
  This is the logical point at which I must confess a wide degree of surprise at the extraordinary arguments adduced in favour of the new Clause by the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). No man, he said, should
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  be compelled to incriminate himself, but, he adds, we have not created a crime. That is precisely what the Clause does. It arms the Race Relations Board with the capacity to create an offence. I would accept as a matter of fact, in some ways I was surprised that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not make the point, that there are certain authorities with that capacity. In social security legislation, an inspector of the Ministry can demand information under this precise type of penalty, although I have not investigated the penalty clause. The Minister under whose authority he acts is answerable to this House. The supporters of the Bill, the more extreme supporters particularly, have all along decided to eliminate the one answerable Minister from the proceedings of the Race Relations Board—the Attorney-General.
  As the Bill stands, as the intention of the Government stands, as the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite has said, the Attorney-General is eliminated. What one is doing is to create a body not responsible to this House, with the capacity to create a criminal offence by demanding information and then reporting to a criminal court. I find that utterly and completely deplorable. The hon. and learned Gentleman went on to argue that in civil proceedings a man was bound to incriminate himself, and these were civil proceedings. What he failed to understand completely was the logical conclusion of his argument, because under the Bill there will be civil proceedings if the Race Relations Board is not satisfied with the result of its voluntary inquiry. In those proceedings the person accused of discrimination will have to give evidence if he is subpoenaed. The full power of subpoena exists in those civil proceedings. What the hon. Gentleman is arguing is wholly unnecessary.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman goes on to say that there must be discovery of documents and that people are bound to discover documents in civil proceedings. Again, if the Board, as a result of its conciliation procedure, which is basically voluntary under the Bill, does not succeed in obtaining satisfaction under Clauses 18 and 19, this is precisely what will happen under the Bill. The proceedings will be begun and, under the proper authority of a judicial officer—a judge, or a registrar of a county court—

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  there will be discovery of documents. In other words, the real sanction of which the hon. and learned Gentleman made so much will be there and what he proposes is wholly and absolutely unnecessary.
  I take that argument a stage further, because I think I can claim to have a legitimate point of view on this. I realise that the Board has always felt that it needs further powers. I am sure that it does not. To act at all it must have some information to the effect that some contravention of the Act has occurred. It does not investigate in vacuo. If it did, it would be making itself ridiculous. It asks the target against whom the allegation is made, "Is there any truth in it?" He can say one of three things. He can say, "Yes, it is true", "No, it is false", or, "I am not going to give you any information."
  If he says the third at any stage of the proceedings, the information in the hands of the Board, coupled with his attitude, evidence of which can be given in the county court, if the county court is the tribunal which will ultimately decide upon the matter, will be available to the civil court for the purposes of evidence. Even if he is not subpoenaed to give evidence, which very likely will not be the case, for the value of a subpoena can be grossly exaggerated, that evidence, on the balance of probabilities, wall hold the field, because it is a civil court and not a criminal one.
  I would hope that this is something on which all parties can unite. This is a proposal which is illogical in its conception, unnecessary in its application, and inconsistent in its demands. If it were introduced, it would be oppressive. For those who oppose the Bill it would make the Bill totally offensive. For those who support that Bill, it would destroy and undermine any confidence they might have.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes it the main point of his argument that he would not give to a body which was not under the control of a Minister and answerable to the House powers to demand information on pain of legal penalties. In fact, his Government—I believe that he was intimately concerned with the matter—produced the Restrictice Practices Court with a Registrar of
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  Restrictive Practices, which is the inforcement agency and who can demand information. A refusal to give information in the way requested in the Clause is, under that legislation, an offence.
  Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman is giving his own case away. The Restrictive Practices Court is a court constituted at law, operating at law, and the Registrar is an officer of the court. This is the whole point I was making. The hon. Gentleman's reference to the Restrictive Practices Procedure leads me to make another point which passed through my mind when the hon. and learned Member for Northampton was speaking. The hon. and learned Gentleman, in expressing doubts about the injunction procedure and about the procedure provided by the Bill for hearing in the county court—as the House knows, the county court is not my preferred tribunal—overlooks the large range of judicial proceedings which recent Parliaments, under successive Governments, have introduced, whereby this is the very sanction selected by Parliament and which on the whole has proved, or the threat of it has proved, to be a wholly effective means of enforcement without the criminal law being invoked and without, in nine cases out of 10, the injunction being imposed.
  For all these reasons, I am against the Amendment.
  Mr. Richard: I am not surprised that the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) is against the Clause, because I remember the speeches he made in Committee. The analogy made by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) with the restrictive trade practices law is quite apt, for this reason. Section 15 of the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, which is a piece of legislation the primary responsibility for which must rest on the other side of the House, as it was passed in 1956, provides for the examination of any witness before the High Court at the request of the Registrar. That request precedes any suggestion of court proceedings. Indeed, it can be totally independent of court proceedings.
  As I understand the position, it is an apt analogy, for this reason. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will take this into account, because I know that he has strong views on this

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  matter. Nevertheless, this is a strong point on the other side of the argument. Under the restrictive practices and monopolies legislation, just as under this legislation, the recourse to court proceedings is the end of the ladder: it is the last link in the chain. The very last thing that is desired in race relations legislation, as in restrictive practices and monopolies legislation, is to get to court.
  That is why it is right for the Registrar to be given the power, when he is investigating certain agreements, to go to the court and ask for a witness to be examined before the court. It is right in that case and it is right in this case, for very much the same reason, namely, that we do not want a multiplicity of court actions and we do not want the Board to have to chase off to court every time somebody says, "I am not going to answer any questions". Therefore, the analogy is apt.
  The second point which is underestimated by the right hon. and learned Gentleman—and by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, I fear, if his attitude tonight is to be the same as it was in Committee—is the uniqueness of the legislation and of this problem. After all, we have not created a criminal offence, but we are not in the realm of purely civil law. What we have done, if anything, is to create something analgous to a statutory tort, and we have gone on to provide a statutory form of enforcement of that tort, leading to eventual court proceedings.
  In these circumstances, it is logical to ask those on whom the burden of enforcement is to be placed, who are themselves the most expert and informed in this matter, whether they believe that they have the necessary powers. Those who are expert in this field, and who are charged by the Government with the responsibility of trying to enforce the legislation, are overwhelmingly of the opinion that they have not sufficient powers, because there is no form of investigatory procedure which they can call in aid before they have to go to the trouble of launching court proceedings.
  If the object of the exercise of the Bill is to conciliate, there must be some procedure for dealing with the total non-co-operator. Somewhere along the line,
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  before going to the trouble of launching a county court action, seeking an injunction, and asking for the whole panoply of the law to be brought into play, the Board should be entitled to step in and say, "You have refused to answer our questions. Now we shall ask you to answer them by virtue of the statutory authority that we have been given under the Bill".
  I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) that the real sanction will be the publicity. If the Board say to a man, "If you do not answer our questions at this stage, you may have to undergo a public examination", the threat of the public examination will be almost as effective as the threat of the court action and of the eventual injunction.
  I rest my case upon the uniqueness of the situation, the uniqueness of the problem, and the unique way in which the Bill, fully supported by the Tory Party, has tried to deal with the problem of creating a statutory tort and an enforcement machinery. There is the further point that those charged with enforcement say that they believe that they will be inhibited. There is the final point that both right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench said in Committee that, if they are inhibited, we must try to do something about it. I prefer to deal with that possibility now. I see no danger in not conceding in general terms some form of investigatory procedure before going to court.
  5.30 p.m.
  The precise form of the new Clause, in creating a criminal offence with a fine of£100 or imprisonment not exceeding three months, is not wholly acceptable to me. What we argued in Committee was not whether a man should be fined£100 or sent to prison for a period not exceeding three months, but whether he might suffer the ultimate indignity of being fined£10 because he was in breach of a county court subpoena issued by a county court judge.
  I would prefer to see that that type of civil procedure where the Board could apply to a county court, get a subpoena and have the man examined. If the only sanction is a£10 fine, I would prefer that to the massive criminal penalty

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  expressed in the new Clause. Although without much hope of success or without much faith in my plea, I ask my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary at least to consider the views of the Race Relations Board and look at the matter again.
  Mr. Callaghan: It is right that we should have this discussion again, because it goes to the nub of the problem of the powers of the Race Relations Board. That is basically what we are discussing. There is here a fundamental clash of opinion. I take a different view from that of my hon. Friends the Members for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) and for Barons Court (Mr. Richard).
  It is true that the Race Relations Board would like these powers to be conferred upon it. I am asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court to agree that because the Board wants the power conferred upon it, therefore the House should confer that power upon the Board. That is not a wholly persuasive argument for me. There must be rather better reasons than that.
  The one thing which I regret about the justifiable campaign which has taken place—I do not complain about it; people are entitled to say that they want the Board to exercise the powers—is that in their enthusiasm some hon. Members and some interests outside the House have said that the Bill will be valueless unless the Board gets these powers. That seems to me to be not only destructive of the usefulness of the Bill, but also wholly untrue.
  Let me make the point clear. It is not true to say that the Bill is wide in scope, but lacks teeth. I may rouse some antagonism elsewhere on this matter, but let us get the facts straight. The Bill has teeth. The question is: who is to bite? Is it the Race Relations Board or the courts? That is what we are discussing.
  I ask those who say that they are in favour of legislation, but who then go on to attack it the whole time on the ground that the Board is not getting the powers, to stop that kind of argument, because the powers exist. It is important that everybody should recognise this. The question is: by whom are they to be exercised? My hon. Friend the Member for York said that one of the weaknesses of the Bill is that the Board has
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  no power to compel anyone to appear before it or to produce papers; it is not a policeman, it is not a court. That is what my hon. Friend says. That, however, is not the concept in the Bill. It is not the concept on which I believe that the Board is best likely to build up its standing with the public.
  In that aspect, I entirely agree with the view of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) that it is essential that this legislation and the Race Relations Board should carry public opinion with them. In my view, it is more likely that the Board will carry public opinion with it if it has to have recourse to the courts in respect of matters in which it believes that an offence has been committed than if it has the power itself. I believe that I am a better friend of the Race Relations Board in this regard in the attempt to build up that state of public opinion than are those who would themselves at this stage arm the Board with the important powers and liabilities that the Bill conveys. That is my view about that.
  My hon. Friend the Member for York then said that the inevitable result would be to send more cases to the courts. I do not agree. Why should that be? As my hon. Friend developed his argument, I said to myself, as I did in Committee, that what my hon. Friend presupposes is that innocent people will not co-operate with the Board. In saying that more cases will go to the courts, he is presupposing that those who have committed no offence but against whom an offence has been alleged refuse to reply to the Board when it makes its inquiries.
  I said in Committee that I could well understand that somebody might exercise his god-given rights as an Englishman and say that he did not propose to answer, but the number of cases of that nature—and I hope that I can assess opinion about this as well as my hon. Friend or anybody else—are likely to be extremely small. I do not accept my hon. Friend's view that the consequences would be to send more cases to the court, unless I must deduce from that that those who have not committed an offence will refuse to co-operate with the Board. That seems to me to be an unlikely conclusion.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: I do not for one moment suggest that the increase in

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  the number of cases will come from innocent people. To be able to conciliate, however, the Board has to be clear that there has been an act of racial discrimination. I am saying that guilty people, who are under no compulsion to provide the information to the Board, might prefer to refuse to give information and, therefore, the Board would be inclined to send more cases to the courts. That is the argument.
  Mr. Callaghan: I do not follow that, either. What my hon. Friend now says is that a guilty person—at least, someone who is presumed to be guilty and is not denying his guilt—goes before the Board and refuses to answer the questions, and that if the Board has the powers it will not send the case to court. That is not likely either. How can one conciliate a guilty man who is determined to persist in his guilt? One cannot have it both ways. Either this is a conciliatory body or it is a court. In my view and in the view of the Government—and that is why we bring the matter forward in this way—the Board is a conciliatory body, and one cannot compel people to be conciliated if they themselves refuse to conciliate. I will return to the point later.
  I have looked up the points raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton about arbitrators because it is important in considering what powers should be given to the Board in this regard. If the analogy were close, it might be worthwhile thinking about it again, but the analogies which I have found do not persuade me that I would be right to give these powers.
  The function of the Monopolies Commission, for example, is confined to reaching findings and making recommendations. It is the ultimate tribunal. I understand that there is no appeal from it. Nor does the Commission initiate inquiries. It operates only when a case is referred to it by a Minister of the Crown. Therefore, that analogy is not complete. No one would argue that the Race Relations Board should operate only on the basis of a case referred to it by a Minister of the Crown. There is, therefore, an entirely different set of circumstances.
  The Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements, to which my hon. Friend
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  the Member for Barons Court referred, is the closest approach that I can find to the kind of power that I would like to give to the Race Relations Board. Here again, however, the failure to comply with the notice is a criminal offence punishable by a fine of up to£100. I do not believe that it is right that we should arm the Race Relations Board with powers and penalties of that sort.
  The power of the Registrar of Restrictive Trading Agreements to issue a notice is in relation to the narrow question of a restrictive trade agreement. What is more—and, here again, I must come back to where I started from at 3.30—the Registrar, whom my hon. Friend quoted, has no conciliatory function. He is not a conciliator. He is, as the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) said, an officer of the court in one sense. Therefore, I do not accept the view which has been put forward that these powers are given to other people.
  I come back to my main argument which can be summed up in this way. The Board's primary function is to secure conciliation by agreement. That is what the Government want it to do and, as it emerged from Committee, that is what the Committee wanted it to do. I believe that it is right and sensible, in the present state of development of the Board and the necessity to carry public opinion with it, that we should ensure that the Race Relations Board does not reach too far yet. Whatever may be the development in the future, and I cannot foretell it either way, their principal rôle is that of conciliation.
  My second main argument against adopting the new Clause is that there would have to be a criminal sanction against failure to comply with the orders of the Board, and this would be contrary to the whole concept of the Bill as it has been discussed. Compulsory attendance before the Board would inevitably require appropriate safeguards to maintain the principle that nobody should be compelled to incriminate himself. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone answered that point admirably, and there is no need for me to pursue it. That, clearly, is a very important argument against it. A fully effective safeguard for a man who was

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  compelled to appear before the Race Relations Board in practice would enable him to remain silent in proceedings before the Beard. Such proceedings would be of no practical value unless the principle that no one should be compelled to incriminate himself is breached.
  I think that the last sentence of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton added up to complete support for the line we are taking. He said if a person appeared in front of the Race Relations Board mute and silent, the Board would say to him, "If you do not answer you will have to produce your papers in front of the court if we form the opinion that an offence has been committed." Exactly. That is exactly the procedure that is laid down and it seems to me to be the right procedure.
  I am certain that we are right to divide these powers. I emphasise that it does not weaken the Bill in any sense. It is a division of powers rather than an aggregation of powers, and, therefore, I regret that I cannot accept the Clause.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: I will not keep the House for more than two minutes at the most, and I should not have added anything to the admirable speech of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) were it not for the praying in aid of the precedent of the Restrictive Practices Court. An hon. Member opposite said that my right hon. and learned Friend was a member of the Government who passed that Act. I was not only a member of the Government; I was one of the Ministers directly responsible for formulating the provisions of the Act and taking charge of its conduct through the House. I say, with respect, that it is wrong to press the analogy of that Act as a precedent for these powers. It is true that there is a power in the Registrar to get the information as to the restrictive agreements which there is a statutory duty to register, but that is a necessary power. It is not an oppressive or inquisitorial power, because if the restrictive agreement exists it is simply a matter of fact and it must be registered. In every respect basically the procedure of the Act is judicial, and it was on that basis that we put it before the House. I do not want to go into far off things and battles long ago. It was because it was
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  judicial that it was voted against by the other side.
  Mr. Richard: Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that one reason why power was given to the Registrar was so as to avoid the ultimate sanction of having to go in front of the courts? If they were given the limited power multiplicity of action would be avoided.
  5.45 p.m.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: It was confined to the registration of the agreement. The agreement had to be registered, and it was in the interests of the parties that it should be registered, since it was only by so doing that they could displace the onus that it was against the public interest. The hon. Gentleman must appreciate that it was in an entirely different climate. Under that Act the sort of parties engaged are very substantial indeed and equipped and aided from the start by solicitors, counsel and the like who are able to look after themselves.
  Dr. Winstanley: I am sorry to delay the House, but I regret that I cannot advise my right hon. and hon. Friends how to proceed on this matter, whether to give their support to the Home Secretary or to withhold it.
  I cannot advise them until I have an answer to a question to which I endeavoured to get an answer in Committee and which has not been answered this time either. The Home Secretary told us that the number of cases in which people would refuse to give information would in his view be "infinitesimal". This was the word he used. I suggest to him that this would depend on what such people think is likely to happen if they do not answer the questions, and this is precisely what this discussion has been about.
  The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) in his interesting and convincing speech said that the person could behave in three ways. If, for example, a representative of the Board or of the conciliation committee visits a public house to find out whether or not the public house refused to serve someone and asks questions, (a) they can say "Yes, it is true", (b) they can say, "No, it is not true", or (c) they can decline to answer.

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  Surely there is a fourth possibility. They may very well say, and would do so, I imagine, "What happens if I do not answer?" What is then said? Is the Race Relations Board representative then to say that nothing happens, in which case I would suggest that they might not answer; or will the Race Relations Board representative say, "Of course, if you do not answer, this is a matter that we will take into consideration in deciding whether or not to refer the matter for civil proceedings before the court."
  The Home Secretary will recollect that this is precisely the solution on the Order Paper as a way in which we might proceed. In other words, it is suggested that rather than adopt this formula we should make it clear that, where a person fails to respond either reasonably or at all to inquiries made of him, this should be in itself a reason, if the Race Relations Board so determines, to refer the case for civil proceedings. If the Home Secretary will state quite clearly that the Board has this power and can proceed in this way, I would advise my hon. Friends to support him, since it would seem that the point about which we are worried is answered. I agree that these powers must be given. I agree that it would not be right that the rô le of the Board should be frustrated merely by people declining to co-operate, but I take the point, and I accept the force of the argument, that it should not be given powers which would be more suitable or more appropriate to the courts and which should not be vested in a body of that kind.
  If the Home Secretary can say unequivocally that the Board has the power, that, where a person refuses to answer, this, ipso facto, can be a reason for the Race Relations Board referring the case to the country court which could then issue subpoenas and so on, I would be satisfied.
  Mr. Callaghan: I would just say quite shortly that if I were a member of the Race Relations Board and were faced by somebody asking what would happen to him if he did not answer, I would say that it depends on the opinion that I form on the papers that are in front of me, and if I feel on the basis of the allegation that has been made and any other evidence that I have that it should go before the court, then I will take it
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  before the court. I suppose, if I was a member of the Race Relations Board, I would have to try to judge whether his failure to answer was in itself another factor in forming my opinion, but I imagine that the Race Relatons Board in considering the matter would base its opinion primarily upon the evidence it had in front of it and only secondarily on the attitude of anybody who appeared in front of it.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Before I beg leave to withdraw the new Clause, may I say that, if the argument of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is right, I am surprised that the experience in the United States should be that those States which have these powers for their conciliation committees have proved to be more effective than those which do not. I hope that that will not be the case in this country, but I am quite willing to accept the greater wisdom of the majority of the House.
  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 5

  EDUCATION, TRAINING, ETC., FACILITIES FOR MINORITY COMMUNITIES
  It shall not constitute any offence under this Act to advertise, offer or provide special facilities for education, instruction or training primarily or solely for the members of a minority community resident in the United Kingdom, provided that the provision of such facilities is restricted to the members of such a minority community.—[Mr. Gower.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  Mr. Raymond Gower: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is suggested that with this new Clause we should discuss New Clause 6 (Banking, insurance, & c, facilities for minority communities), New Clause 7 (Welsh proprietor of hotel, & c.,), New Clause 8 (Jewish proprietor of hotel, & c), New Clause 9 (Scottish proprietor of hotel, & c), New Clause 10 (Mohammedan proprietor of hotel, & c), New Clause 11 (Hindu proprietor of hotel, & c), and New Clause 12 (Irish proprietor of hotel, &c).
  Mr. Gower: These new Clauses deal with certain marginal albeit difficult aspects of the legislation. It may be that the fears which have been expressed to me are exaggerated, but I hope that the Government will acknowledge that difficulties may arise.
  In the case of new Clause 5, for example, it is possible that a school or college might be opened in London for the benefit of the relatively small commercial Japanese community in London. In such circumstances, it would be reasonable and in no way objectionable if entry to it were limited partially or even completely to the children of that community. After all, there have been many instances in the past of schools in foreign countries for the benefit of the resident British minority communities there. One has only to think of British communities in countries like the Argentine in the past.
  A glance through the London classified telephone directory or the classified directory of any other large city in the United Kingdom will reveal details of various forms of lycée, certain kinds of convent schools, Jewish kindergartens or day schools and schools for other specified groups. One can realise some of the problems which may arise if this Clause or something like it is not inserted in the Bill.
  Let me turn briefly to the matters referred to in New Clause 6. Under the Bill as it stands, I apprehend that it would be an offence for a Malta-born resident in London to organise special credit facilities for the benefit of members of the fairly large Anglo-Maltese community in this country. What might otherwise be regarded as a beneficent and enlightened action in some circumstances could infringe the provisions of the Bill. In the same way, it appears that it might be an offence for an Indian-born resident in the United Kingdom to make mortgage advances or credit facilities available only to Indians.
  In the case of the new Clauses which deal with hotels, perhaps I might cite the example of the many small Welsh hotels which one finds in the Bloomsbury and Paddington areas of London. Seldom, if ever, are they restricted to Welsh visitors, but, quite naturally, some of their proprietors have confessed their anxieties to me about the possible conse-
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  quences of the Bill. In most cases, the vast majority of their visitors come from the Principality, and, at busy times of the year, it is quite natural for the proprietors to tend to make special efforts to accommodate them. Confronted with two or three would-be guests, they tend to give some kind of priority to a late arrival from Wales. This is not to be construed as racialism, but they fear that in these marginal cases of difficulty they may be exposed in some way to the provisions of the Bill.
  It is obvious that the position could be even more serious in the cases of the many Jewish hotels in Bournemouth, for example, where they provide in addition kosher food for orthodox Jews. In most cases, their proprietors would be the last persons in the world to exclude someone who was non-Jewish, but I know that some of them feel a little anxious about the Bill in its present form. The Bill should not be left unamended so that it could conceivably be employed to oblige the proprietor of an establishment advertised as kosher to accept visitors who might require different kinds of food.
  These are some of the problems on which I think it is right to comment. Here we have a rather difficult and perhaps marginal aspect of the Bill, but I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will feel that these are valid observations and that there are real cases for examination in which it may be wise either to seek to adopt the suggested wording in the new Clauses or something similar in order to prevent these cases being brought entirely within the scope of the Bill.
  Mr. Evelyn King: I rise briefly to support the new Clauses and, if possible, to extend the philosophy behind them. At first sight, these may seem to be minor matters, but I believe that they affect the whole philosophy behind the Bill, because we strike here a contrast between those who wish to assimilate and those who wish to integrate, and the new Clauses bring out the dilemma.
  It is not a bad idea to project oneself a decade or two ahead and try to visualise the sort of society which will bring happiness in the situation that we face. There are those who visualise some kind

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  of neutered, grey Englishman in a certain number of generations, in whom all races will be completely assimilated—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are on Report. We cannot discuss the philosophy behind the Bill. We can only discuss the new Clauses at the moment.
  Mr. King: Then I will move to them. I had intended to argue from that that any community, as a community, has rights and that the new Clauses seek to confer upon a community the rights which it ought to have. I think that that is within the ambit of the new Clauses.
  A Pakistani arriving in this country for the first time naturally will seek to go to a Pakistani lodging house. It would be extraordinary to promote a Bill which, if I read it correctly, would make it illegal for a Pakistani lodging house to restrict its clientele to Pakistanis. Indeed, it would not be sensible to do that, because it in no way contributes to the solution of the problem that we all wish to solve.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) has dealt with the Welsh, Jewish and various other communities, but the spirit which I have tried to describe seems to run right through the Bill, and it will be a bad Bill if we do not recognise the rights not only of an individual but of a community. I believe that communities will thrive as communities, and that is relevant to these Clauses. If the Clauses or something similar are not incorporated in the Bill, we shall deprive the different communities in this country of the rights that they should have.
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Ennals): I do not know whether it is any consolation to the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) but, initially, the Government had some sympathy with the matters which concern him. When the Bill was submitted orginially to the House and to the Standing Committee, Clause 2(3) said that nothing in the Clause would
  "…render unlawful anything which is done in good faith for the benefit of a particular section of the public which has the effect of promoting the integration of members of that section of the public into the community."
  In Standing Committee, I argued that there would be some advantage in having
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  this sort of protection for the efforts which might naturally be made in the interests of minority groups.
  6.0 p.m.
  The matter was fully debated in Committee, but the views which I then argued were not shared by hon. Members. The arguments adduced against putting in such a protection were three-fold. The first was the feeling that such a protection was not necessary. There was a recognition of activities specifically designed to assist minority groups, such as Pakistanis, Italians and Japanese. We thought that it was extremely unlikely that such an activity would be open to criticism or be brought before the Race Relations Board. It was aruged in Committee that there was nothing wrong in discriminating in favour of a minority group, since we are concerned with discriminating against.
  It was argued, secondly, that such a provision might open the door to various forms of abuse. Some hon. Members feared that it might lead to the sort of "separate but equal" argument which we debated earlier.
  The third argument—and this is the essence of the matter, particularly in relation to new Clauses 5 and 6—was that it was best to rely on the good sense of the Race Relations Board and the conciliation committees. This, I believe, is the soundest argument of all. It is unlikely that the Board or the conciliation committees would consider the sort of activities referred to by the hon. Member for Barry as being in any way in breach of the spirit or letter of the Bill. The Board is a responsible body and the conciliation committees are equally responsible.
  The other new Clauses, Nos. 7 to 12, deal with hotels and slightly different principles apply. As I understand it, the hon. Member for Barry is not seeking to allow proprietors of hotels to operate their premises exclusively for their co-nationals or co-religionists but only primarily for that purpose. It is fair to say that hotels which are known to cater for certain types of residents will probably attract that type of resident.
  Mr.Gower: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that it would be extremely expensive for, for example, a Jewish hotel which caters for orthodox people, who require a

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  special diet, to provide an alternative diet for other visitors?
  Mr. Ennals: It is unlikely that someone who does not wish to partake of the diet offered would seek to go to that hotel. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman need worry because hotels already come within the scope of the 1965 Act. He said that certain hoteliers were worried about the Bill. The evidence in the three years since the 1965 Act was passed is that no such cases have arisen. The matter has not been brought before the Board and since the provisions in the Bill for hotels are almost identical to the 1965 Act, the hon. Gentleman's fears seem unfounded.
  In any event, one could add to the list he gave. One can think of Italian, English, Welsh, Scottish and other hotels. It is at this point that the question of evasion arises. I hope that, with these assurances, the hon. Gentleman will not feel it necessary to press the new Clause.
  Mr. A. P. Costain: Hotels in areas like Folkestone do a lot of catering for conferences. Does the hon. Gentleman see any possibility of an hotelier who wishes to fill up his hotel with a community, so to speak, forming a conference would be guilty of an offence under the Bill?
  Mr. Ennals: No. Not at all. An hotel which sets aside its accommodation for a conference would refuse to take others because it would not have other accommodation. However, if it were to say, "This conference includes some Pakistanis or West Indians and therefore we are not prepared to accommodate that conference ", then that would be a form of discrimination and would be covered by the Bill.
  Sir D. Renton: I have much sympathy for my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) in this matter. I acknowledge, however, that it would be difficult to fit into the framework of the Bill the new Clauses which he has tabled.
  Difficulties arise when we legislate in this way. Hard cases make bad law and my hon. Friend referred to potentially hard cases. The crux of the matter is that my hon. Friend is trying to make it possible for people to discriminate in
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  favour of certain ethnic groups without falling foul of what will become the law by avoiding any sort of discrimination against. The principle of the new Clause is worthy of further consideration.
  The Under-Secretary took refuge in the original Clause 2(3) and said, in effect, that that would have met the difficulties to which my hon. Friend referred, but I do not think that it would have done. There were many reasons why hon. Members on both sides of the Committee threw out that subsection. It would not have met the point made by my hon. Friend because it was cast in somewhat restrictive terms. Besides being in favour of a particular ethnic group, it insisted that what was done was done to integrate that group with members of the public at large. It cannot be said that a Welsh or Italian hotel proprietor catering mainly for people of Welsh or Italian origin is helping to integrate them with members of the public. For this reason that original subsection would not have done the trick.
  The Government should consider this matter further so as to make it abundantly clear in the Bill that when there is a genuine attempt to discriminate in favour of an ethnic group in a way which is not contrary—I speak in broad terms—to public policy, then that should be within the law.
  The Under-Secretary considers that this matter is best left to the good sense of the Race Relations Board and the conciliation committees. I do not deny that they will have good sense, but it is better that we should spell out in the Bill just what we are getting at, instead of leaving it to the Board and the conciliation committees virtually to exercise a dispensing power, because that is what we are in danger of doing. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Barry is to be congratulated for raising this matter, and I hope that we have not heard the last word on it.
  Mr. Ben Whitaker: I wish to raise an additional item which supports the comments of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. The analagous provision which was removed in Committee stipulated that such an activity should be to the benefit of the minority community concerned. No such words appear in any of the new Clauses

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  tabled by the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower). Although I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's intention, the wording he has suggested would leave it open to maliciously minded persons to provide separate and worse facilities in, for example, banking and insurance for the very minority groups whom he wishes to assist. Although his intention is otherwise, his proposals would leave the Bill open for a coach and horses to be driven through it.
  Mr. W. F. Deedes: I, too, have considerable sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) is trying to do, particularly when I remember that the only conclusion we reached in an argument in Committee on Clause 2(3) was that these matters should be left to the discretion of the Race Relations Board. The Undersecretary has re-echoed that view.
  It follows, notwithstanding what has been said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton), that over a period we shall build up a loose system of what might be termed case law arising from decisions reached by the Board. It follows, again, that it will be very important for the Board to report adequately what decisions it has reached in certain cases, and its reasons for reaching them. I only wish to put on record my belief that in getting the right answers to the point which troubles my hon. Friend we shall eventually depend heavily on a sort of case law built up by the Board.
  Mr. Percy Grieve: These new Clauses have drawn attention to one of the anomalies in the legislation, which is that we are putting race relations into a straitjacket. The Clauses are not, in principle, unlike the matter with which we dealt in Committee when we discussed an Amendment of mine to exclude from the scope of Clause 6 advertisements by restaurants or places of entertainments dependent for their appeal on a national or regional atmosphere, for staff of that region or nation.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) has now drawn attention to another anomaly. Clause 6 deals with every kind of advertisement where race enters into its spirit. Such advertisements may be bad, and we therefore support
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  Clause 6 when it deals with them—the vile street corner advertisement, "No coloureds need apply". That is what Clause 6 envisages. But I ask the Government to consider between now and when this Bill goes to another place, the restrictive aspects of the legislation, and to see whether some means can be devised to give effect to the improvements proposed by my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Whitaker: It might assist the hon. and learned Gentleman were he to look at Government Amendment No. 64, which attempts to meet his point.
  Mr. Grieve: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I have seen and studied the Amendment to which he refers, and I am grateful to the Government for their concession. In that case, they have excluded from the scope of the Bill—and it is in accordance with their assurance in Committee, on which our Amendments there were withdrawn—employment by such institutions as I have in mind of a national or a particlar type if it is designed to give effect to a national or regional atmosphere. Amendment No. 64 clearly meets that point, but not the advertisement difficulty or the practical difficulty referred to by my hon. Friend.
  6.15 p.m.
  Sir Douglas Glover: I have a good deal of sympathy for the new Clauses standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Barry (Mr. Gower). I was not very convinced by the interjection of the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Whitaker), who said that such a provision might be used for affording inferior facilities, inferior hire-purchase companies or inferior loan associations. I understand that a number of the new communities in the country already have their own hire-purchase and loan associations.
  There is nothing compulsory about the proposal. It does not say that a Pakistani will only get his hire-purchase or his building society loan from a certain organisation. It merely says that it would be in order for a minority to have a special organisation for the provision of education, loans or other facilities. Incidentally, I am surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) is not present. Had this Bill already been on the Statute Book, what would have happened to the Temperance

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  Building Society when it started? I assume that, in that case, the Society would have been held to be discriminating against part of the population.
  My view is that the Clauses would be accepted were it not for the problem presented by the English. The Government would be perfectly prepared to allow the Welsh to advertise their hotels as having a special welcome for the Welsh, and for Scottish hotels to advertise their hotels as having a special welcome for the Scots, but they could not include the English, because to do so would be to produce a wall of discrimination against anyone else. That is the difficulty which my hon. Friend faces. One can bring in Amendments to deal with all the minority groups, but not to cover the major groups.
  The Government are right, in my view, not to accept the Clauses, but, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) has said, my hon. Friend has drawn attention to a sufficiently important problem. I therefore hope that, before the Bill is enacted, the Government will look again at this matter, because my hon. Friend has shown quite clearly that, in a desire to have no discrimination, we can produce, in a strange sort of way, more discrimination than we are stopping.
  Mr. Gower: As I am given to understand that something will be done in this respect, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1
  MEANING OF "DISCRIMINATE"
  Amendment made: No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out Clause 1.—[Mr. Ennals.]
Clause 2

  PROVISION OF GOODS, FACILITIES AND SERVICES
  Sir D. Renton: I beg to move Amendment No. 3, in page 1, line 14, leave out 'any goods' and insert 'the'.
  Mr. Speaker: With this Amendment, I have suggested that we take the following Amendments.
  Amendment No. 4, in page 1, line 14 after 'services', insert 'referred to in the following subsection'.
  Amendment No. 11, in page 2, line 5 leave out 'instruction or training'.
  Amendment No. 12, in line 8, leave out 'business, profession or trade or'.
  Sir D. Renton: Amendment No. 3 is a paving Amendment to the three that you have mentioned, Mr. Speaker. I should mention that Amendment No. 7, in page 1, leave out lines 21 and 22 and insert:
  'Without prejudice to the foregoing subsection, it shall be unlawful to practice discrimination as there described in the provision of the following facilities and services:'
  which is an important drafting Amendment which has been selected for discussion on its own, is also essential to these Amendments, and I should be glad if that fact could borne in mind.
  The purpose of the Amendments taken together is to limit the scope of the Bill to what may, by any stretch of the imagination, be called desirable to ensure racial harmony, and to prevent the Bill from remaining so wide in its application that it would frustrate its own purpose or, to use the current jargon, be counter-productive.
  The British people are about the most tolerant in the world. In spite of well-known stresses in some areas and in spite of aggressive attitudes, alas, on the part of extremist minorities, there is a high degree of racial harmony in this country, for which we can be thankful. Legislation is not the only way to achieve racial harmony. Other ways can be more effective—by good will, good example, "good cricket", and even indifferent cricket—than any kind of statutory investigation. Although legislation can help in certain ways, it can do more harm than good if it is cast too wide as this Clause is cast.
  The Clause governs the whole Bill. When legislating we should confine ourselves to what may be helpful. We should avoid casting our net so wide that the legislation is unacceptable to the community at large and so wide that it is virtually unenforceable. This general declaratory Clause, Clause 2, has already been eloquently criticised by my right

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  hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) both on Second Reading and in Committee. The Clause applies to the provision
  "of any goods, facilities or services".
  As an example it refers to
  "the services of any business, profession or trade".
  To legislate in such wide terms is to assume, and to assume quite wrongly, that there is likely to be widespread discrimination. In fact, that is not likely to be the case. Besides being unnecessary and possibly dangerous to do so, it is uncomplimentary to all the people of this country, immigrants as well as the indigenous people. Inevitably, although paradoxically, it may limit the freedom which many of them hoped to enjoy when they came here.
  I put forward these Amendments to overcome, I hope to a reasonable and modest extent, that great defect of principle. Especially is this done by Amendment No. 12 which would eliminate the words "business, profession or trade". It is far too sweeping to include every business, profession or trade. It is not necessary and it is certainly unenforceable. By leaving out the words "instruction or training" the word "education" would be left in. It is arguable that even that is not necessary because public authorities are not allowed to discriminate in education and there is no evidence that there is discrimination in education.
  The words "instruction or training" cover all kinds of small operators, including those who give driving lessons, dancing lessons and judo lessons, and advertise them to the public. Very often instruction or training involve rather close personal relationships. The need for preventing discrimination in this part of the field has never been put forward, so far as I know, in any of the inquiries concerned. The Street Report is silent on this. I suggest that we are best without it.
  I accept the need for some extension of the present scope of legislation. The House will note that even if my Amendments were accepted the Bill would still be cast in very wide terms. I need not read the whole of subsection (2), but,
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  leaving out the words "instruction or training" and the words "business, profession or trade" would still leave in a vast range of activities. By any stretch of the imagination it is hard to see that the legislation should go any further than it would if the Amendments were accepted.
  These Amendments, taken together, would mean that subsection (1) would be limited by the terms of subsection (2). Surely that is right. By having a general declaratory provision in subsection (1) and then giving examples of it in subsection (2), we are creating a legislative monstrosity and giving the Race Relations Board and the courts an extremely difficult task of interpretation. In my opinion, this is the most important matter we shall discuss today. Both the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary have shown laudable open-mindedness about many of the lesser defects of the Bill to which we drew attention in Committee.
  I hope that the Under-Secretary will either say that he accepts these Amendments or that he will consider them with a view to amending the Bill in another place. Alas, in these days we often hear of the gulf between Parliament and people. On these Amendments the Government have a chance of preventing that gulf getting wider. Incidentally—I hope this will appeal to the hon. Gentleman—he also has a chance of bringing the two sides of the House closer together.
  Mr. Heffer: I urge my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary not to accept these Amendments. I am sure he will not do so because, if they were accepted, in essence the Bill would be emasculated. The right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdon (Sir D. Renton) is going much too far. He will agree that I showed laudable open-mindedness in Committee in the same way as did my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, but I cannot relate that open-mindedness to these Amendments.
  An example was given of the services of someone training a person to drive. Why should an immigrant not have the right to call upon all those who do the service of teaching people to drive? Why should an immigrant not have the services of any business, profession or trade?

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  It seems perfectly logical that any immigrant should have these services available to him as much as to any other citizen.
  I believe that every open-minded hon. Member agrees that inevitably there are problems. No one is trying to force on to the general public something which they do not want, but if these Amendments were accepted we would be working in reverse. Some citizens who came from other countries would be excluded from the services of professions and trades which other citizens are able to get, by the mere fact that they were born in this country. I agree that this Clause is one of the most important in the Bill. Because of its importance I ask my hon. Friend not to accept any of these Amendments, but to resist them to the utmost.
  6.30 p.m.
  Dr. M. S. Miller: I counsel my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to resist the Amendments. We have had a clear indication from the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) that there is a big gulf in respect of not only what he was referring to but the Bill's aim, which is the complete elimination of discrimination. If we take out of the Bill certain aspects and points which are of vital importance to it, it becomes emasculated and no longer serves its purpose.
  Often the members of the public look not for conscious bridging of gulfs, as was suggested by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire, but a bold approach and a clear indication of willingness by a governing body to take certain steps to make them clear. If we were to remove from the Clause the words which the right hon. and learned Gentleman suggested should be removed, it would have the effect of making it obvious not only to the immigrant community but to the host community, the indigenous population, that we were not serious about what we are attempting to do.
  For example, to remove the words "instruction or training" would be very dangerous. The removal of the words "business, profession or trade" would take out of the Bill many of the essential points in the minds of hon. Members on this side of the House when the Bill's
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  concept was agreed to on Second Reading and in Committee. Many hon. Members on this side would strenuously oppose any attempt to take these words out of the Bill.
  Mr. Grieve: I give my wholehearted support to the Amendment because the Clause, as it stands, will present the courts with an extraordinarily difficult problem of interpretation. It would have been very much better if subsection (2) had not appeared in it at all. What will happen when a judicial interpretation has to be put on the Clause? There is a well known principle of the interpretation of statutes to be found in any text book which is in the form of a Latin tag—expresso unius est exclusio alterius. The mere fact of citing a number of examples of what comes within the purpose of the Clause is likely to make judicial interpretation of it difficult. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) seeks to do away with that difficulty.
  There are hon. Members on both sides of the House who see merit in this legislation and, whether they see merit in it or not, who desire that once it is on the Statute book it should be feasible legislation which is not just a derision but is enforceable, because it is appalling to put on the Statute Book legislation which cannot be properly interpreted and which, to a large extent, cannot be enforced. The Amendment is a distinct improvement on the Bill.
  I turn to the second limb of the Amendments which involves omitting the words "instruction or training" and "business, profession or trade". Again, I give my right hon. and learned Friend my support, although I think that this is a much less important aspect of the Amendments than the first. When it comes to "instruction and training" and the carrying on of a "business, profession or trade", the ordinary commercial considerations which guide ordinary commercial enterprises will prevail. It is most unlikely that people, however racialist they may be, who run, for instance, driving instruction concerns or carry on various businesses, professions or trades in this country, which is supposed to be a nation of shopkeepers, will allow any prejudice which they may have

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  to override their ordinary commercial and business interests. For that reason, I support the second limb of the Amendments.
  Mr. Heffer: If the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) was not certain about the question of limitation, he should have tabled an Amendment to eliminate subsection (2).
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss Amendments which an hon. Member thinks should have been moved.
  Mr. Heffer: The hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) was supporting his colleague's argument. If the Opposition are concerned about the question of limitation, they should have proposed the elimination of subsection (2). With the elimination of these words, there would be a further limitation.
  Mr. Grieve: I may be out of order if I reply to the hon. Gentleman, but, in my view, the Clause would have been better without subsection (2).
  Sir Spencer Summers: I was not present during the earlier stages of the Bill, but I have made it my business to read the report of the whole of the Committee proceedings. I regret that I am unable to support the Amendments.
  I can go along with the proposition that if the Bill were drawn too wide or was too severe it would not attract the cooperation of the public which we would all wish to attract. In so far as the Amendment seeks to limit the Bill's scope, I think that it is misconceived. I can understand the case for the small operator being eliminated, but we are not concerned with him. We are concerned with services listed among the examples which it is suggested shall be subject to the provisions of the Bill. I cannot help thinking that the prejudice of some professional and business people will override their commercial considerations.
  I am no lawyer, but I can understand the view that the way in which this matter is dealt with, with a preamble and a list of examples, is complete nonsense. Perhaps one does not have to be a lawyer to realise that it is presented in a stupid form. I do not in the least wish to defend the form in which the proposition is put
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  forward in the Bill or to criticise the attempts made to put it in a more intelligent, more palatable form. All that I wish to do is to record my concern at what appears to be the other additional outcome of the Amendment, namely, to limit the Bill's scope. I cannot see my way to supporting the Amendment.
  Mr. Ennals: In moving the Amendment, the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) said that, if I were to accept it, it would contribute to bringing the House closer together. I am grateful for the speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers), which proved that that was not entirely so.
  In Committee, my right hon. Friend and I sought to be open-minded, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman was kind enough to say, in trying to improve the Bill as we went along. I think that that is what we did. On this occasion, I have little doubt that acceptance of the Amendment would do serious damage to the Bill. It would substantially limit its scope and seriously impair its effectiveness.
  I agree that this is one of the most important parts of the Bill, and the present debate is one of our important debates. One of the defects of the 1965 Act, apart from omitting provisions against discrimination in employment and housing, was that its definition of public place was too narrow. On the Second Reading of the Bill in 1965, I said precisely that and urged that it be extended to include credit facilities, banking, insurance and so on. I am glad that the present Bill does that.
  It would be wrong, having now recognised some of the weaknesses in the corresponding Section of the 1965 Act, were we intentionally to limit the Bill once again.
  Sir D. Renton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I think that the hon. Gentleman has failed to realise that the Amendment dealing with banking facilities has not been selected.
  Mr. Ennals: But the point I make is sound none the less. The 1965 Act was much too limited in terms of services and facilities. The intention is that this Bill should be broader. It has deliberately been drawn widely.

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  In reply to the criticism about listing examples;, I assure the House that these examples are not exclusive. I am sure that no court would have any difficulty in recognising that. Neither is this form in any way exceptional. There are other pieces of legislation in which examples are given.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We are not debating the Clause. The hon. Gentleman must come to the Amendments.
  Mr. Ennals: The Amendments would limit the field in which discrimination would be a civil offence, but, more than that, they would limit the field in which the good offices of the Race Relations Board and the conciliation committees could help to bring about conciliation and help to remove situations of discrimination. For example, the reference to shops would be omitted. The shop is a most important form of service, and in it all sections of the community are entitled to receive equal and fair treatment. I see no reason why we should exclude shops.
  Next, instruction and training. Equal opportunities for apprenticeship and industrial training are essential if we are to avoid creating a section of second-class citizens with few skills to offer to industry. We must consider here, not just for this year but for the years to come, the situation which the words in the Clause would cover. In our schools today, there are about 185,000 boys and girls, either immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants—coloured "kids"—who will be coming on to the labour market and going forward as young Britons entitled to all the services available to any other section of society, regardless of colour. A vital aspect of this situation is that they should have equal opportunities in industrial training and apprenticeship so that they will not be second-class citizens as they seek to work their way up the industrial ladder.
  Mr. Orme: I agree very much with what my hon. Friend has said about industrial training. One of the problems in the United States is that the exclusion of the negro community from many of the artisan and skilled jobs has been one of the results of the divisions existing there which the Americans are now
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  trying to overcome within their own society.
  Mr. Ennals: I agree with everything my hon. Friend says and, equally, with what was said by the hon. Member for Aylesbury about business, professional and trading facilities. The point is not that people should have opportunities at the lower levels of industry. They should have opportunities in all sectors of industrial and commercial activity. This applies no less to insurance and credit facilities, in regard to which there is a good deal of evidence of discrimination which, I am sure, all right hon. and hon. Members would wish to remove.
  Professor Street, Mr. Geoffrey Bindman and Mr. Geoffrey Howe, Q.C., a former Member of the House, said in their Report that they were in favour of extending the field of facilities, recommending that the Bill should cover
  "all places…offering accommodation, goods, services or facilities to the public."
  Nothing in the part of the Clause to which the Amendments are directed would in any way undermine the right of anyone involved to make a normal commercial judgment, Whether in insurance, credit, housing, lodging houses or any of the matters covered by the Bill. In motor insurance, for example, it would be appropriate to require a recent immigrant, whatever his race or colour, to pay a higher premium when his inexperience might be a factor affecting the risk. Equally, linguistic shortcomings might be factors to be taken into consideration. What the Clause provides is that colour and race should not themselves be determining factors in all the fields which are open to other sections of the general public.
  The Bill is about equality, neither more nor less. Once we start defining narrow areas to be covered by it, we might give the impression that it was perfectly all right to discriminate in those fields which the House had removed from the Bill, and, equally, we should remove the opportunity for the Race Relations Board and the conciliation committees to bring about conciliation in situations where discrimination now exists.
  I assure my hon. Friends that I shall resist the Amendments.
  6.45 p.m.
  Mr. Hogg: I hope that the Undersecretary of State has not spoken his last word on this matter. We all want to approach it in an objective way. I am quite sure that, when the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) says that that is what he did in Committee, he says no more than the truth. Disconcertingly, I often found myself able not only to agree with what the hon. Gentleman said but to support him with my vote in Divisions—disconcertingly, because I had never thought, until we had our experience in Committee together, that I should find myself so often in agreement with him on both the tone and the content of what he said. But one can be pleased as well as disconcerted, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not take it amiss that I confess to a certain surprise.
  I do not, however, agree with the hon. Member for Walton on this matter, and neither do I altogether agree with the Under-Secretary of State. Although it is unnecessary to do so, I remind the House that I am caught by this Clause, as are all members of my profession. I do not mind that. I do not mind it for a particular reason. If the Amendments were adopted, they would eliminate my being caught by the Clause because they would omit the professions from the list under discussion. I am strictly in order, therefore, in referring to this matter.
  It is important that we have the point clear. The professions in this country do not discriminate. A member of my profession who discriminates on the ground of race, or of religion or ethnic origin, for that matter, commits a breach of professional etiquette. I should be sorry if anything done in this Bill cast doubt upon that honourable duty not to discriminate which we all undertake. We do not discriminate. Furthermore, it should be said—
  Dr. Miller Dr. Miller rose—
  Mr. Hogg: I shall give way in a moment or two, but I wish to finish this point. Let us suppose that an hon. Member introduced a Bill against corruption and in it he put a Clause forbidding judges to take bribes. I can understand some judges being offended by such a Clause, not because they want to take bribes but because they object to the suggestion that they need a Clause telling them not to. I do not need a Clause
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  to tell me that I must not discriminate, nor does a doctor, nor does a priest.
  Dr. Miller Dr. Miller rose—
  Mr. Hogg: I shall give way, but the hon. Gentleman must contain himself for a moment. We shall discriminate neither more nor less, and we shall not discriminate at all, whether or not the Clause is passed. But some of us slightly object to the suggestion that we need legislation to tell us that we must not do so.
  In the past six weeks I have received about 50 offensive letters complaining that I appeared for 11 Pakistanis. Where the correspondents were good enough to give their name and address, which was by no means always, I replied proudly that I belong to a profession like that of the doctor and priest which does not discriminate on grounds of religion, race or colour. Why do we need a Clause for that when I am bound by the honour of my profession?
  Dr. Miller: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. I always listen to him very attentively, and I am not in the slightest disconcerted by often agreeing with him, but I dispute his contention that all professions do not discriminate. I cannot answer for the right hon. and learned Gentleman's profession, but I can say something about my own. It is obvious to me that there exist and always have existed all kinds of discriminatory practices in the medical profession.
  Mr. Hogg: I cannot speak for the medical profession, but the hon. Gentleman absolutely appals me. I decline to believe without strong evidence that a doctor faced with a sick patient would say that he would not treat him because he is a Roman Catholic, a Jew or a Pakistani. It seems to me utterly repugnant that he should do so. I decline to believe that it is necessary to insert Clauses in Bills to make a doctor, lawyer, priest or member of any other profession—an architect or an accountant, for example—do what I believe every honourable man and every honourable member of one of the learned professions would do without compulsion.
  Dr. Miller: That is not the kind of discrimination I meant. It is not the

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  only kind of discrimination that exists. There are many other forms of discrimination in the provision of services. It might well be that a doctor who has in his power the ability to provide a particular service to a coloured person could discriminate against him.
  Mr. Hogg: The kind of discrimination we are talking about in discussing the Amendment, which is the only discrimination with which I can be concerned at present, or I should get into trouble, is precisely the discrimination I was talking about and not the kind of discrimination the hon. Gentleman wished to talk about. I am appalled, and I do not believe that the great professions of this country discriminate or require legislation to prevent it.
  I have always complained, and I complain now, that the Clause, unamended by my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendments, makes no distinction between cases where discrimination carries its own financial penalty and those where, as I have always conceded, though not to the entire satisfaction of my hon. Friends, discrimination can have its own internal dynamic. I have always conceded that in the latter example there is a case for legislation, but in the former case I consider legislation unnecessary.
  I agreed with the Under-Secretary of State when he said that he wanted shops covered by the Clause. We have had several examples in our discussions already of how difficult it is to be absolutely sure with these referential Amendments exactly where we should get if an Amendment were carried. I understand that a shop is a place to which the public have access. It has always been so held, as far as I know. Therefore, it would be caught by the Clause, whether or not the Amendment were carried. I agree that on that ground a shop qua shop should be inside the Clause.
  I have always thought, as I said in Committee, that one cannot deal with industrial apprenticeships and instructional training on a discriminatory basis, and if we are to deal with employment at all—and I have conceded that that is right—we must include some form of instructional training. If and in so far as my right hon. and learned Friend's Amendment would cut out industrial apprentice-
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  ship or training, I would agree that it went a great deal too far.
  But that leaves me with a residue of cases where ordinary competition in an industrial society between small businesses will impose a penalty on discrimination and tend to eliminate it. I regard legislation here as unnecessary, and the Under-Secretary of State regards it as an important part of the Bill. That is a point of difference between us. I do not think that we need to try to impute motives at one another or to start getting excited about it. We are all entitled to take an objective view, and I have tried to do so.
  I was much reassured, although I am not sure that I accept the legal advice the hon. Gentleman has received, to hear from him that his legal advice is that the normal commercial judgment of an insurer would not be impaired even if the Amendment were rejected. However, as he knows from the long discussions we had in Committee, that was not the view I should have formed unaided by Government legal advice.
  I absolutely accept that the shop must be in the Bill, and I absolutely accept from the hon. Gentleman that industrial apprenticeship and industrial training cannot be excluded, so long as we deal with employment, which I am happy to do.
  But on the two narrow points that I have mentioned—that our great professions do not require legislation, and that there are a large number of businesses where discrimination carries its own economic penalty and legislation is unnecessary—we should have a division of opinion in the House.
  Mr. Ennals: I was glad to hear what the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) said about apprenticeship and industrial training. On the question of shops, I think that my reading of Amendment No. 3, which would have removed "goods", might certainly have left in question whether shops were included.
  The right hon. and learned Gentleman was perhaps a little over-sensitive on his main point. I am not here to argue whether certain professions practise discrimination. The right hon. and learned Gentleman says that the legal profession does not, and I have no reason to believe otherwise. My hon. Friend the

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  Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Dr. Miller) said that there are certain examples in the medical profession. I do not know whether that is true. It would be an impossible situation if the Government produced a list of the groups which discriminated and those which did not, and said that we need not include those which did not practise discrimination and that we must include those which did. We are saying that all the facilities should be open to people regardless of race and colour.
  If it is true that certain professions do not discriminate, even though they are covered by the Bill, they will not be bitten by the Bill. To argue that because they are pure they should be excluded is an argument we cannot accept. It is best that the definition should be drawn as widely as it can be. That is what the Government have sought to do, and therefore the Clause will catch any who discriminate, which is as it should be.
  Sir D. Renton: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment. We have had a very valuable discussion, and we respect the views we have heard from both sides of the House. If it be the fact that industrial apprenticeship and training needs to be specially covered, I suggest that the Government should have it specially covered and not let the broad phrase "training and instruction" apply to all kinds of small operators, where it may not be appropriate.
  On the question of shops, the Government themselves left out the word "goods" in subsection (2). Therefore, I think that the point that the Under-Sec-retary made against me was not quite right. But if shops need to be covered, let them be covered, instead of the incredibly wide words that we have:
  "any business, profession or trade".
  I am prepared to leave it to the hon. Gentleman to consider these points. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment, but I still tell him that if he wishes the Bill to be acceptable and enforceable it would be well worth considering the wide scope of Clause 2.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  7.0 p.m.
  Mr. Speaker: We come to Amendment 5, with which I suggest we take the following Amendments:
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  Amendment No. 14, in Clause 3, page 2, line 14, leave out from beginning to 'him' and insert—
  'or deliberately omitting to employ'.
  Amendment No. 15, in line 18, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.
  Amendment No. 17, in Clause 4, page 2, line 39, leave out 'neglecting' and insert' deliberately omitting'.
  Amendment No. 18, in page 3, line 2, leave out' neglecting' and insert' deliberately omitting'.
  Amendment No. 20, in Clause 5, page 3, line 16, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.
  Amendment No. 22, in line 20, after 'by', insert 'deliberately'.
  Mr. Ennals: I beg to move, Amendment No. 5, in page 1, line 16, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.
  The Amendments listed here deal with a question which was considerably debated in Standing Committee—the use of the word "neglecting" in relation to the providing of goods, services or facilities, including other facilities listed in Clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5.
  In discussion in Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) questioned whether the word "neglecting" was the right one. I gave an assurance and undertook to consider whether we could find another word which would make clear that "neglecting" would not include mere omission or forgetfulness. The Amendment gives effect to this undertaking.
  It also meets the point of the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the word "neglecting" cannot refer to any deliberate act because a deliberate act is not an act of neglect. I hope he will feel that the words "deliberately omitting" cover both points. Incidentally, the words will also cover the undertaking given by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government that the question of "tactical discrimination" in the field of housing was covered.
  We hope that "deliberately omitting" will cover all the points which raised some concern in Committee.
  Mr. Hogg: I think that this is an improvement, and I thank the Under-Sec-retary for taking notice of what was said to him in Committee.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Mr. Hogg: I beg to move Amendment No. 6, in page 1, line 19, leave out 'normally' and insert 'in like circumstances'.
  We had an undertaking from the Government to consider this matter. An hon. Friend of mine referred to it in an earlier discussion. I do not know what is meant by "normally". As the hon. Member for Cheadle (Dr. Winstanley) said, I should rather object to being called in some ways an abnormal person, but I understand what I mean by "like circumstances". Although what is "like circumstances" may be difficult to apply in practice, the meaning of the phrase is at least clear.
  In Committee the Under-Secretary said that he would look at this again. I know him well enough to know that he has looked at it again, but he has turned me down flat, and I want to know the reason why he has turned me down flat.
  Mr. Ennals: We seriously looked at the point made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but we had to reject it for the same reasons as I gave him in Standing Committee.
  Although the wording "in like circumstances" might be thought to be more appropriate for insurance and credit transactions, the use of that qualification could, as I sought to explain in Committee, provide a loophole in that it would allow insurance companies to treat certain sections of the public differently from other sections. It might be that they would treat Pakistanis in the same way as they would treat other Pakistanis, or West Indians in the same way as they would treat other West Indians.
  The term "normal" could be spelt out. We could write a longer Clause which would define what "normally" means. Whether it would be helpful, I should have thought that the intention was clear—that in normal circumstances like treatment would be offered and like facilities would be given. I am afraid that when we looked at the points made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman we felt that the term "in like circumstances" would not suit and that the term
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  "normally" would be effectively understood.
  Mr. Hogg: I cannot pretend that I am wholly satisfied with that explanation, but if I were to divide the House on it, I think I should incur the just displeasure of one and all. So, though wholly dissatisfied, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. Hogg: I beg to move Amendment No. 7, in page 1, leave out lines 21 and 22 and insert:
  'Without prejudice to the foregoing subsection, it shall be unlawful to practice discrimination as there described in the provision of the following facilities and services:'.
  This Amendment is rather like the last one, except that I have rather more conviction behind it. I had some undertaking—I cannot recall the terms—from the Under-Secreary or one of his colleagues in Committee.
  I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) when he rather jumped the gun in an earlier discussion and said that the words of subsection (2) are a nonsense. I think he said "a monstrosity". Although the expression "a monstrosity" is strong language, I think that "a nonsense" is not too strong a phrase to use of the form in which the draftsmen have chosen to cast this subsection.
  There are two ways in which one can cast one's net wide as a matter of legal draftsmanship. At least, I have always supposed that there were only two ways. One can use words with the widest possible application. For instance, when we give independence to a country, we give is legislature power for the "peace, order and good government" of the country, and that is held to cover anything that the legislature can possibly do. Sometimes when the wide words need amplification or need at the periphery the removal of doubt, one uses the wide words in one's legislation and then adds the expression "services"—or whatever it may be—"shall include", and then one states the places to which the public have access in order to leave no manner of doubt about it.
  One way of doing that is to add after or in the course of one's wide words specific things specifically enumerated, a series of individual cases, and then to

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  add the words "or any other" and so on, in order to complete the large class that one wishes to denominate. That seems to me to be the traditional draftsmanship to which those whose duty it is to write and understand Acts of Parliament are accustomed. But for some reason which I have never understood and which has never been explained properly to us either in Committee or now, the Government have chosen to eschew the traditional methods of draftsmanship and to introduce a totally new method of their own. They use wide words, and then they say, "The following are examples of the wide words". If the examples are not intended to be exclusive or limitative in any way—and this at any rate I understand is not the intention of the Government—but the words are themselves wide enough to embrace the examples, I cannot think what useful purpose they serve.
  Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: In my right hon. and learned Friend's great experience, has he seen this form of words before?
  Mr. Hogg: I never have. I have corresponded with the Home Secretary about this and he has told me that there are precedents but has not said what they are. I have never seen precedents for these words. If, on the other hand, these words are not intended to be limitative but to remove any possible doubt, I cannot think why the Home Secretary does not use something like the form of words in the Amendment, which clearly, at any rate, has the merit of following traditional custom which, even in these permissive and radical days, has some advantage if one wants other people to understand what one means by human language. After all, we cannot all be Humpty Dumpties in a matter of language. We cannot just make words mean what we want them to mean and expect judges to understand what we want them to do.
  I do not think that it is particularly part of my task on this Bill to supplement the labours of the Parliamentary draftsmen or even to assist the Government to improve their own Bill except where matters of principle and policy are involved. But I was so perplexed in Committee as to why they had done this extraordinary thing that, when I discovered that they were sticking to it on Report, I thought
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  it worthwhile to ask for a more lucid explanation of what they think they are about.
  Mr. Ennals: Happily, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said, there is no matter of principle or policy involved here, except for one small point. If we were to accept the Amendment, it would limit the facilities and services to those which are listed in the Clause as it stands. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] That certainly is a possibility.
  Mr. Hogg: Surely I must be right about this. My Amendment says:
  "Without prejudice to the foregoing subsection…"
  Surely, therefore, it does not limit.
  Mr. Ennals: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right. I ask his forgiveness. The subsection as it stands sets out a list of examples of what is meant by facilities and services for the purpose of subsection (1). This approach has been suggested as fairly novel, but it is not entirely new since there is something on these lines in Section 2(2) and (4) of the Occupiers' Liability Act, 1957, introduced when the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself was a member of the Government.
  This was also suggested as a means of handling the problem by the authors of the Street Report. The fact that it is novel does not mean that it is wrong. It is a useful method of explaining subsection (1). It was realised early on that it would be impossible to provide an exhaustive list of facilities and services. Without subsection (2), subsection (1) would be much more difficult to understand, and we would not have had this debate if we had not sought to indicate the sort of services which are covered. But there is no reason why such an example could be read as limited, and it is simply a matter of draftsmanship—whether it be the work of the Parliamentary draftsmen or that of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I suggest that there is no significant point of issue here, and I hope that he will not press the Amendment.
  7.15 p.m.
  Mr. Angus Maude: Like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), I find it difficult to see why the Government want to take this line, because it is an unusual course and it is

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  not the logical course. It is all very well for the Under-Secretary of State to say that this a useful way of illustrating the principles he is trying to put into the subsection, but the Statute Book is not the place to give useful examples of principles one is trying to illustrate. They should go into the explanatory memoranda, White Papers or handbooks for the guidance of those who are going to have to carry out the law. That is where we put useful examples of principles. We do not enshrine them in legislation.
  Surely legislation must state in the clearest possible terms for the courts to interpret exactly what we are including and exactly what we are excluding. There is no question of putting in useful examples, and it would be ultimately for the great benefit of clarity and administration if the hon. Gentleman were to use the form of words suggested in the Amendment and leave his useful examples for proper publication.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: The Undersecretary of State has not told us any reason for pursuing his novel form of words. Nor has he given any convincing reason for rejecting the conventional form of words suggested in the Amendment. Both are designed to secure the same objective, but there can be no doubt that the words of the Amendment achieve it whereas, despite what the hon. Gentleman has said, there must be doubt as to whether his words achieve it because they are virtually untried and they are in danger of the difficulty which my right hon. and learned Friend pointed out on another Amendment—that, owing to the rule of construction, the expression of the one implies the exclusion of the other.
  The hon. Gentleman has produced one precedent, a somewhat tenuous one. I do not suppose that any of us has the provisions of the Occupiers' Liability Act, 1957, exactly in our minds. But we must have gone 600 or 700 years without finding it necessary to use this form of words. We have used it once in this not very important or fundamental Statute and have never used it again for the next 11 years. That seems the extent of the precedent and authority on which the hon. Gentleman relies and it is a tenuous base for a novel concept which appears to
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  do no good and may, in fact, achieve some harm.
  Would not the hon. Gentleman think it prudent, after consultation with the Law Officers—who do not seem to be favouring us with their advice and assistance at the moment but, no doubt, are readily at hand—to consider amending this provision in another place?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I have the Occupiers' Liability Act, 1957, here and I say categorically that this form of words is a complete nonsense. There is no precedent for it in the law. I say that categorically and I shall be very surprised if I am stated in any sense to be wrong. Section 2(2) of the 1957 Act states:
  "The common duty of care is a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the purposes for which he is invited or permitted by the occupier to be there."
  That lays down categorically a standard of duty applicable to the Act, but it cannot possibly be relevant to the brief given to the Under-Secretary of State on this Bill.
  The Under-Secretary also referred to Section 2(4) of that Act, which merely says:
  "In determining whether the occupier of premises has discharged the common duty of care to a visitor, regard is to be had to all the circumstances…"
  and the circumstances are then set out. That is the common duty of care subject to the relevant circumstances to be applied under that Act, and I therefore repeat that it can in no sense be used as a precedent here.
  It is singularly unfortunate that these words should be used, because once a precedent is obtained, it is carried on in future Acts. Here it is said that the following are "examples" and the word which is the monstrosity is the word "examples" which has never been used in Parliamentary language hitherto—
  "…examples of the facilities and services mentioned"
  —and some are set out.
  It is the duty of the courts to construe the general intention of Parliament, and if Parliament makes a general statement that the Bill is to cover all the professions, all the trades and all the services mentioned earlier, if it is set out so widely,

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  Parliament gives very wide powers which shall not be taken away. But if we seek to impose some form of circular, which is all this wording is, giving examples and particulars of some of the cases which will be applicable, Parliament will make a nonsense of itself and a nonsense of the authority of the courts.
  I invite the Government to withdraw this wording and at least to give us a firm undertaking that it will be discussed in another place when the lawyers there on that occasion I am perfectly certain will back, for once at any rate, what I say.
  Mr. Ennals: As has already been said, no question of principle or policy is here involved. I give the assurance that I will discuss with the Law Officers whether there would be any further advantage in what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has proposed. I give no assurance about what will happen in another place, but certainly I will look at the matter.
  Mr. Hogg: I do not want to be unkind. On that assurance, not quite adequate, but certainly more forthcoming than the Under-Secretary's first speech, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. Hogg: I beg to move Amendment No. 9, in page 2, line 2, after 'establishment', insert:
  'with sleeping accommodation for more than 10 persons'.
  Mr. Speaker: With this I have suggested that we should discuss Amendment No. 13, in page 2, line 9, at end insert:
  (3) During the two years beginning with the commencement of this Act, this section shall not apply to any hotel, boarding house or other similar establishment with sleeping accommodation for less than 10 persons, unless the establishment is an hotel within the meaning of the Hotel Proprietors Act 1956 or would be such an hotel apart from such discrimination as is described in subsection 1 of this section.
  Mr. Hogg: I want to move this Amendment almost formally because several of my hon. Friends wish to speak on its merits. I suggested a rather similar Amendment in Committee and thought, no doubt wrongly—because the Home Secretary has been very honourable about discharging his obligations—that I had received an undertaking that
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  something would be given to me on Report. In the circumstances in which I drafted my original Amendment, I did not have time to consult those who knew the situation better than I did about the appropriate limitation for the exemption figure which I selected, and I agreed that it was too high, as several hon. Members on either side of the Committee pointed out to me. For that reason I was at fault. I originally chose the exemption limit of 20, which the Undersecretary said was too high, a view which was the consensus of the Committee.
  However, I understood the Government to agree to give me something on Report and, as far as I can see, they have given me nothing. I have therefore moved this Amendment which exactly halves the figure which I first thought of. All exemption limits must have some kind of element of the arbitrary about them, and I am not in the least wedded to any particular figure. However, I feel that the Government ought to have given us something.
  The essence of the purpose behind the Amendment is as follows. I have always conceded and I concede, whatever my draftsmanship may occasionally achieve, that the common inn is bound not to discriminate. It is bound not to discriminate at common law and I have no complaint that it should be caught into the Statute, now that the Statute is seeking to catch up with the common law.
  But a different series of considerations applies to private boarding houses, some of which cater for very small groups of people, sometimes groups of people emanating from particular sources. Some cater for particular religious communities. Some of my hon. Friends who represent constituencies by the seaside, which I do not have the honour to do, have constituents who feel strongly about this issue. The provision of temporary accommodation of this kind is not well dealt with in the accommodation provisions, to which we shall come later. The provision of temporary accommodation requires separate treatment which this Amendment and its consort, Amendment No. 13, attempts to give it.
  However, there is one consideration which is relevant to this Amendment

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  and to the later discussion. I have always conceded that when dealing with mass factors and large operators, managements must be expected to conform with the law as laid down by the Bill. Large managements can easily do so, because they can switch employees or guests from one position to another; they cart find room in unusual places and can exercise the ordinary business of management if for any reason the persons for whom they are catering do not get on with one another.
  But with very small operators, very small employers, very small landlords, or very small boarding house keepers, there may be human situations which, whether reprehensible or not—and they sometimes arise through nobody's fault—drive the very small management to exercise what must in the end often be an arbitrary judgment. For the small management when it has to operate in this way, perhaps very much against its will, to be subjected to the elaborate process of the Bill is likely to be oppressive. I leave it to my hon. Friends who are better qualified than I to give examples. However, because I got some kind of undertaking which I do not think has been fulfilled, I move the Amendment.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: I support what has been said so well by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg). "Boarding house" is a very wide term of which there is no statutory definition and it follows that if there is no quantitative restriction expressed, as would be the effect of the Amendment, the Clause will apply to all boarding houses, including those run on a very small family basis.
  For more than 100 years, ever since Mrs. Dancy sued a Mrs. Richardson in 1854 for loss of her baggage in a boarding house, the law of England has distinguished between the position of a boarding house on the one hand and hotels on the other hand to which the full innkeeper's liability attaches. In that case one can see the sort of characteristics of a boarding house in that Mrs. Dancy had the use of sitting room, drawing and dining rooms in common with others, her own bedroom, her board and—and now we depart from topicality —the attendance of the servants, among
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  whom were a butler and page who, when required, went errands for the guests and carried their luggage to and from their rooms when they arrived and departed, all of which she got, incidentally, for a sum of between£2 and£3 a week, which gives a rather nostalgic impression today.
  7.30 p.m.
  The basic distinction in law between boarding houses and hotels is now enshrined in the Statute referred to in Amendment No. 13, the Hotel Proprietors Act, 1956. That Act confines innkeepers' liability to establishments
  "…held out by the proprietor as offering food, drink and, if so required, sleeping accommodation, without special contract, to any traveller with some qualifications…".
  The essence of the distinction is the words "without special contract" and "to any traveller". There is, in the case of boarding houses, a special contract and an implied selectivity which derives therefrom. That is obviously because of the more personal, intimate and generally smaller nature of the undertaking.
  The Oxford Dictionary gives the meaning of "board" as:
  "to be supplied with food or food and lodging at a fixed price, to live with a family as one of its members for a stipulated charge."
  It is clear that the character of these small boarding houses is very different from that of an hotel, as is their position in law. I submit that the same principle as preserves boarding houses from full innkeepers' liability should preserve them from the full rigour of the law in this respect. That does not derogate from the intention of the Bill, but would avoid the imposition of complication and difficulty in respect of these very small establishments.
  Mr. David Winnick: As these boarding houses, in the main, are in seaside areas offering inexpensive accommodation for people staying for a week or a fortnight, is there not a danger that, if they are to be excluded, the poorer types of person will be penalised, because they may be discriminated against as a result of the colour of their skin? They would only be able to go to an hotel, which they could not afford.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: That is not the case. Under the Amendment it will be only the very small boarding houes to

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  which this will apply. It is more relevant in the context of the permanent or quasi-permanent accommodation, than to the sort of accommodation the hon. Member has in mind.
  Mr. John Hynd: I do not rise to oppose or support the Amendment, but to question as to whether the Amendment meets the situation in the way envisaged by its movers. I should like the Minister to consider a case which occurred in my own constituency. In a private house where I was for some time a guest, there lived a man who was a training engineer at one of the pits, his wife and his mother of 90. His mother used to sit in the stone-flagged kitchen, reading—with the aid of her spectacles—for most of the day.
  An Indian mining engineering student arrived in the village, found some difficulty in getting accommodation, and my host, who was very non-racialist in his attitude, invited him warmly to come and live in his house, which the Indian did. He was a very cultured gentleman, and everything went on swimmingly—everyone was very happy about the Indian. As he was to be here for some time he brought his wife over from India. His wife was a charming lady, as many Indian ladies are, who wore a sari and had the habit of wandering about the house without any shoes.
  She insisted upon cooking the food for her husband to which he had been accustomed in India, which gave rise to odours to which the normal inhabitants of the house were not accustomed, and to which the old lady strongly objected. Furthermore, the old lady was from time to time very startled when what appeared to be a ghostly figure, making no noise, moved past her when she was reading. Eventually they had to ask this Indian to look for further accommodation. Under the Clause as it stands I would have thought that the owner of this house, who acted with the highest possible non-racial motives, would be subject to a penalty, not because he acted because of racialism, but simply because of the impossibility of these two different groups of habits, odours and customs mingling.
  I do not think that the Amendment meets this point. It is an intimate problem which arises in this context, and
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  I raise it in order that the Minister can tell us how he would consider such a problem could be met without bringing within the Act someone who is behaving with the very highest possible motives in mind, and who cannot under any conditions be regarded as being a racialist.
  Mr. Costain: As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) said, this is a matter which affects seaside constituences very much, and in particular the small seaside boarding house. The hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) raised a point that, if the Amendment were accepted, cheaper accommodation would not be available to certain people. I think that he is exaggerating. The small boarding houses at seaside resorts are usually run by husband and wife or by a widow. They feel that in their own accommodation, which is really a large private house, they must be entitled to have some ability to select guests.
  I will quote a case, not in my constituency, but of which I know, of a couple who came back from Kenya, having had one of their children murdered by their own servant during the Mau Mau riots. As a result they cannot bear to have anyone from Africa in the house with their remaining child. Who can blame them? However much they want to, they cannot do it, because it brings back all the memories. Unless we accept this Amendment, these people would have to give up their business, and I am sure that no one wants to see this happen. These are the sort of cases which the Amendment would help.
  Mr. Evelyn King: I rise also as a representative of a seaside constituency, although I am not particularly influenced in what I am about to say by that fact. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) drew a legal distinction between an hotel and what we may call a rooming house. There is a practical distinction too. If one owns an hotel, one presumably has one's doors open, anyone can go into it—and many of us do to buy a drink—and then go out again. I concede that such a public place must be open to everyone and that discrimination in such a place should cease.
  When we come to what I will call a rooming house;for want of a better word,

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  one finds the situation where the front door is closed and, where, to get in, one has to knock or ring a bell. I should have thought that that was the definition of a private house. When I say "private house" I do not use the conventional phrase. I emphasise the adjective. If that phrase has any meaning at all, it must mean that it is the one area in one's life which is private, which is one's own, and about which one has absolute discretion as to whom one invites inside. That is a principle worth establishing.
  What this Bill is saying to a landlady, and I will put it as fairly as I can, is that if someone seeks to come to her house, a person of her own nationality, she has absolute discretion to accept that person or to reject him. If that person does not suit her, she has an absolute right to say that he should make other arrangements. If the Bill becomes law, and if an immigrant seeks admission to that private house, where people probably take private meals together and almost certainly use of the bathroom and the lavatory is shared, that absolute discretion is removed, and there will be an obligation on the landlady to take someone whom she might wish to reject.
  I draw attention to another example which is almost as important. A person may take in a lodger who, after he has been admitted, does not fit in with the close establishment living together. Perhaps he is noisy and does not get on with the other guests. Such a landlady must in the course of nature sometimes wish to reject such a person, but, because he is coloured, the likelihood of a complaint being made clearly puts her in a very difficult position, because one will not always be able to satisfy the Race Relations Board or the court.
  The majority of people who run this sort of house are middle-aged women, someone may even argue, and, though I should resent it I will accept it for the sake of argument, that they are stupid women. Because they are elderly and have been brought up in a different tradition—perhaps they are widows of petty officers in the Navy or of warrant officers in the Army—they may be nervous. But because they are nervous, we cannot disregard their nerves. In the majority of cases, there is no difficulty and such people as the hon. Member for Croydon,
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  South (Mr. Winnick) has in mind will be willingly received. In the odd case that will not be so.
  I should speak on this matter with less certainty if it were the fact within the Bill that an immigrant having a complaint to make to the Race Relations Board had himself to make and sign it. That is not the case. In Committee, I moved an Amendment to make it the case. Any immigrant organisation, or any organisation or body, could go to landladies and other places and make a complaint when there was none. It is fair to add that there are about 1,000 organisations devoted to the problems of race. Many of them are highly responsible and are doing excellent work and have the blessing of every hon. Member. It is fair to add, however, that there is a small proportion—perhaps devoted to the Black Power movement—cf troublemakers, and a Clause of this sort is an invitation to them to do more harm than good. If I thought for a moment that this Clause would ease the problems we seek to ease, I should be in favour of it. Because I sense a danger that it may arouse resentment and may cause a row between a landlady and a lodger which gets in the newspapers and may damage the very cause which hon. Members have at heart, I urge that the Amendment, or something like it, should be accepted.
  7.45 p.m.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: I intervene only because my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. John Hynd) raised a case which goes to the root of the misconception which is being aired on the benches opposite, namely, the fact that an owner of a house felt it necessary to expel an Indian lady who had lived in the house for some time because her habits were such that she could not easily get on with the other boarders might bring the case within the Bill.
  It is true that the Indian lady might complain to the Race Relations Board. But I cannot believe that the Board, after the very preliminary investigation which would be necessary, would take the matter further when it realised that the discrimination was not on the ground of colour or race, but simply because this lady, by reason of her habits, could not get on with the other lodgers.
  Mr. Evelyn King: I concede that the Board would behave reasonably. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would concede that, if a landlady were threatened that if she did not do this or that she would be taken before the Race Relations Board and would finally be landed in court, that would be a very intimidating threat.
  Mr. Lyon: The answer to that lies in the way in which the Board carries out the tasks assigned to it under the Bill. Gradually it will build up the measure of good will necessary to show that it takes a sensible view of disputes like that. There is nothing unlawful under the Bill in doing what the landlord of the house to which my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe referred was doing. It is not unlawful to discriminate against people because they cook in a particular way or because they are the sore thumb in a closely knit community. If people cannot get on, it is possible to discriminate. But it is not right to discriminate against people as a group, and that is where the error is creeping in to this discussion.
  That is the error which the dockers who came to support the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) made when they stood outside the House and cursed the Nigerian High Commissioner and Sir Learie Constan-tine as they came into the House because they disliked coloured people who were neghbours or workers in their area. Their conception was that because a man is black he is the same. That is the abhorrent part of racial discrimination.
  With the greatest respect to those hon. Members who represent landladies in seaside resorts, it is no answer to their concern to say that because they have had unpleasant experiences with one coloured man they should be entitled to exclude all others. The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain) referred to the Mau Mau murders. Is it to be said that the Moors murders were so abhorrent to most of us that landladies should exclude all white men from their establishments? Of course not. We would not dream of making such a stupid assertion. Should we go on to say that, because in a particular part of Africa at a particular point in the development of that area, and because of the activities of a particular section of the coloured
  304
  people living in Kenya where the Mau Mau incidents took place, we in this country should be able to discriminate against coloured people from that locality ad infinitum? I cannot accept that we should.
  I concede that there will be occasions when landladies will feel grave concern about taking in coloured people, but I hope that the conciliation part of the Bill will help to explain to them why it is desirable that they should do so and that after the Race Relations Board and the conciliation committees have done their work they will be prepared to take in reasonable, honest, sober guests who happen to be coloured and that thereby we shall achieve the integration which we all honourably desire.
  Sir S. Summers: I have considerable sympathy with the notions underlying the Amendment, but I hope that before we dispose of it a little more will be said to help us in deciding where to draw the line. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) made it clear that he was primarily concerned that there should be an area below which the Bill would not apply, but that he was not particularly concerned about whether 10 was the magic figure or whether some other figure should be preferred.
  An incident was brought to my notice only two days ago concerning a highly educated West Indian couple who were lunching with a friend of mine. They were, incidentally, both independently employed in responsible positions by a public authority. In the course of conversation they disclosed that in previous years they had had such difficulty in finding accommodation of the character about which we are speaking that they thought it would be necessary to take their next holiday in a tent.
  Here is a situation which cannot be ignored. Neither can we ignore the feelings of those who have a small private house in which they legitimately claim that considerations should be allowed to prevail for themselves which do not apply even to the small hotels. Where, therefore, do we draw the line?
  I hope that before we conclude this debate, somebody with a great deal more experience than I have of these matters will say that I am right in thinking that

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  probably eight or six would not be more likely to exclude the small private house with which we are primarily concerned without, at the same time, damaging the holiday prospects of such a couple as I have referred to.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. James MacColl): I should like to respond to the invitation to try to put before the House some of the points at issue. Although we are at odds, there is not nearly as much difference between us as the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) implied. I would not like him to think that we have not studied carefully what he and his hon. Friends and hon. Members on this side said in Committee about this matter. The difference, however, is partly a matter of drafting.
  The right hon. and learned Member dismissed Clause 7 as not being the essence of the problem. Clause 7 deals with this problem because it is the exception Clause to Clause 2 as well as to Clause 5. That is clear from subsection (1). Subsection (3) of Clause 7 defines "residential accommodation" in a wide way to cover
  "a hotel, boarding house or other similar establishment".
  The main argument about where we should draw the line arises on the Amendments to Clause 7 and I would get into difficulty with Mr. Deputy Speaker if I dealt with the detail of that now. That, however, is our answer to the point which has been made.
  The main difference between us is not, I suspect, so much in terms of the numbers of people involved as to whether it is 10, 8 or 6. The difference is the test of the exception for the sharing of accommodation. It is clear from Clause 7 that one of the criteria is that there should be shared accommodation.
  The best place to distinguish the intimate personal relationship such as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. John Hynd) referred to of people moving in and out of shared facilities from the person who has a cutoff apartment and no direct contact with the people living in the accommodation is on Clause 7. That is why we have not put down anything to Clause 2. In our view, that would be the wrong place for an exception.
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  The answer to the query by my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe about the Indian lady is that if she were living as close as that—just one or two people sharing the kitchen with the nice, kind couple—there would be exemption under Clause 7 from the provisions of the Bill.
  I would make this comment about the tragic case concerning the victim of Mau Mau. I would not challenge the intimate and personal nature of that sort of experience. If, however, an Indian or an African immigrant knocked at the door and was refused accommodation, perhaps brusquely and bitterly, is it better to say there must be no kind of attempt to get them to see each other's point of view or is it better to say that a conciliation officer should call, see them both, and say to the African, "I am sure that you will understand this special difficulty. You can understand what these people feel like", and try to bring them together, but not necessarily to live in the same house but to understand their points of view. That is why the Bill is called a Race Relations Bill, because it deals with attempts to improve people's race relations.
  Mr. John Lee: Is my hon. Friend resisting the Amendment?
  Mr. MacColl: What I said about the Amendment being in the wrong place from a drafting viewpoint was intended to mean that it would be unwise to put it where it is proposed.
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I am extremely sorry that although the Home Secretary rather intimated that he would not do so, the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has spoken to this matter before he has had the opportunity, either in Committee or on the Floor of the House, to hear this matter fully put for the first time.
  My hon. Friends who have spoken to some aspects of the matter have covered certain important aspects, but I venture to point out a number of things which have never been mentioned, either upstairs or on the Floor of the House, which go both to the important question of the original drafting of the Clause and to the position which obtains in the practice of the class of accommodation in question. I am sure that the Minister will be kind enough to pay heed to these matters which have been culled from

  307
  experience of having to consider the question through a number of associations and organisations which have not hitherto had the opportunity of any expression.
  In Committee upstairs, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) probed this matter with his usual delightful phraseology. He asked the Home Secretary, who was then present,
  "Could he give us a little more indication as to what it is that he will consider favourably? Can he say what is in his mind that he will consider favourably? At the moment we have no indication at all."
  The Home Secretary replied:
  "Because this is a sensitive area…I do not think that I should go into figures at this moment. All I say is that I think that, having listened to the arguments, there is a case for something more than before."
  None has been given today.
  "There is a case, in my view, for something very much less than 20. The right hon. Gentleman will have to see where we pitch on this",
  which cannot mean anything else than "where we will pitch mathematically".
  "All of us ought to consider it seriously, and I ought not to produce numbers, like a juggler out of a hat on this."
  To this my right hon. and learned Friend replied:
  "In the light of that rather obscure and Delphic utterance, to which…I shall hold the right hon. Gentleman as strictly as the obscurity of his words permits…".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 14th May, 1968;c. 159.]
  My right hon. and learned Friend has again nobly risen to the occasion and put the case.
  I want to put a case which has not been put by anybody. First, let us look at the words set out in the Bill. It has not been looked at carefully enough. It states that
  "accommodation in a hotel, boarding house or other similar establishment"
  shall be the subject of discrimination proceedings at large. The first question which has to be considered by a conciliation committee or by the courts is what is meant by "other similar establishments". If that is construed ejusdem generis, as the courts may contrue it but not necessarily will construe it, it will mean something which is ejusdem generis with a boarding house.
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  8.0 p.m.
  Let me tell hon. Gentlemen, as they have not considered this at all yet, that there is a third category of accommodation in this country which is extremely common and growing, and that is paying-guest accommodation, which is not truly boarding-house accommodation. If hon. Gentlemen will look at their trade union papers they will see that it is common these days to have a particular type of guest house accommodation which is for trade union members only. In the Isle of Thanet we have had some difficulties and at one time I had to write to the father of one of the present Ministers, Mr. Morgan Phillips, because discrimination was shown in boarding houses in the Isle of Thanet, in that they were being reserved for trade union members of the Labour Party only. This hurt the feelings of other ladies in my constituency. They felt that they, too, should be able to entertain members of the Labour Party in my constituency. Therefore, I had to turn my hat round and try to persuade Mr. Morgan Phillips to take a wider view and not to permit discrimination. True to his proper Socialist convictions, he agreed with me that there should be no discrimination.
  In point of fact there is discrimination. There are certain boarding houses or guest houses, namely always with fewer than 10 bedrooms but not always—not accommodation for 10 persons but 10 bedrooms—which are Jewish, and they are kept open to enable people who are Jews to be able to come to stay. They seldom, if ever, accept other people. There are those which provide for Roman Catholics. There are those which have a firm arrangement by which they take five or six couples from old-age pensioner establishments in Birmingham or Manchester, and their affiliated branches, at certain times of the year. We have an arrangement in the Isle of Thanet, for example, whereby old-age pensioners have off-season special rates and have almost exclusive control of one or more houses, usually small ones.
  I see nothing wrong in discrimination in this sense, because I am assuming that there are certain cases where discrimination is the very thing which that type of accommodation seeks. I want the House to realise what has not yet been the subject of any discussion, that they will be

  309
  going into a hornet's nest if they imagine that the Bill as it is at the moment is either explicit or provides for what I would call the private class of case where accommodation is limited to a class of people, namely those whom it is wished to serve.
  Mr. James Dempsey: I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's argument. Will he say whether Conservative clubs discriminate against persons because they do not hold Conservative views?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: They do not, in fact. In the main, Conservatives have their own clubs in different parts of the country with limited accommodation and, from my knowledge of Conservative clubs, they are rather better at snooker than anything else.
  Mr. Richard: I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree that being a Conservative or a Socialist is not a matter of
  "…colour, race or ethnic or national origin".
  In all the instances he has cited the discrimination is not caught by the Bill. Of course, Conservatives are entitled to discriminate against Socialists. If the hon. Gentleman will look at Clause 1 of the Bill which, as I have said, I do not like, he will see that what is caught is not the man who discriminates against Socialists; it is not the man who discriminates in favour of old-age pensioners, nor a person discriminating in favour of anyone coming from Birmingham or Scotland. It is discrimination on the ground of colour, race or ethnic origin. Does not the hon. Gentleman think that his argument has gone?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I certainly do not. In the first place, I mentioned the Jewish race which is covered by it. The discrimination arises in this way. If a coloured person wishes to stay in a boarding house and he is not a member of the trade union or whatever it is, none the less, if it is a smaller establishment, he is entitled to stay. The difficulty of the argument is this. If one discriminates de facto against either Jewish persons or coloured persons, if one discriminates in the manner which is indicated in the original Clause 1, that is to say either on the ground of colour, race or ethnic or national origins, one is caught.
  Mr. Richard: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that one is perfectly entitled to discriminate against a black Conservative on a purported ground, namely, that he is a Conservative, but not on the ground that he is black?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I dare say one can try to do that, but I have no doubt that, in practice, one would have to tell that to the marines.
  If I may now continue with the argument, although there was very wide discussion in Committee upstairs, there is one topic which was not the subject of full discussion upstairs and that is the position which arises with regard to hotels, boarding houses and other similar establishments. Under the wording "smaller establishments", if it is only to cover boarding houses and it is to exclude—and I think it is meant to exclude—the really small type of establishment, with only about 8 to 10 persons, then I think it ought to be clarified, and in the event this Amendment would clarify it along the lines that the Government undertook so to do. They undertook so to do in Clause 2, not in Clause 7, as I have indicated from col. 159.
  Mr. Richard Mr. Richard indicated dissent.
  Mr. Rees-Davies: The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) indicates his dissent, but if he will look at col. 159 of the proceedings in Committee of 14th May, he will see that the Home Secretary was quite specific in his undertaking to give a figure after discussion which would be applicable. I submit that the figure that has been inserted is a minimum one of 10 persons. That is the sort of case where an establishment with a man and his wife running it, which is two persons, and possibly a couple of children, making four, would have three or perhaps four bedrooms for paying guest letting. I deliberately use the term "paying guests" rather than a boarding house.
  The genuine boarding house nowadays, although it has a different liability at law from a hotel, none the less holds itself out to accept everybody, and it has the limitations that I have mentioned of certain classes only about particular times of the year, when it may refuse to have anybody other than a particular class, and that may include ethnic origin; it

  311
  may wish to have Irish, Welsh, Jewish; it may wish to have Sassenachs; it may wish to have international hockey players.
  It has also been overlooked that there has been a tradition in relation to different classes of coloured people which is very much the same as the tradition in relation to different classes of white people. With the utmost respect, if the band of dockers who came to the House the other day had then diverted their attention to Claridges and asked for accommodation, I suspect that they probably would have been turned down. On the other hand, we found in the Isle of Thanet that the Americans when they were based at Manston used to insist that their own coloured population went to Ramsgate, the N.C.O.s went to Margate and the officers went to Broadstairs. It has worked out extremely well. That is the situation, and, when one gets to the realities of life in small paying-guest establishments, it is idle to say that there is no discrimination. I am not trying to argue that it does not exist. I am arguing that it is one of the facts of life. It is manifest that it exists.
  I go much further, because it is an act of policy by many small establishments which have only three or four double bedrooms, can afford to be choosy and have only a limited season of four or five months, to seek to get the bookings of a specific class of persons whom they find suit each other. In Broadstairs, we get a very good type of middle class persons coming from the Midlands and the North. They include a number of hon. Members opposite and their families who are regular visitors and whom we accept as being suitable for that class of accommodation. They attend regularly, and we find them admirable. It is well known that Margate is extremely popular as a conference place for the Labour Party.
  However, there are some establishments in different parts of my constituency who would say, "We do not accept coloured persons, not because we dislike them, not because we have any personal axe to grind against them, but simply because our clientele happens to be of a different nature". They like to meet people with whom they can converse and make friends in their own
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  premises. If they were satisfied that a coloured person who was coming was a friend of the other people, I am sure that that person would be acceptable. But I do not want to see people forced into a position which will affect their businesses in the way that it undoubtedly will if this Clause covers that class of case, as I think that it does. If it does, it will cause trouble in exactly the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Evelyn King) has indicated, not because a coloured person will lay a complaint but because one of those awful informers who are permitted and encouraged under the Bill will inform and cause trouble. Such people will inform not because the case will be passed and accepted by the Race Relations Board, because probably it will not in the outcome, but because it is a good way of getting some dirty, rotten publicity at the expense of the boarding house keeper.
  8.15 p.m.
  Mr. John Lee: In spite of the hon. Gentleman's ingenious arguments, is he not missing the whole point of the Bill? He is saying that we must make concession after concession to the less pleasant aspects of human nature. If this Amendment is allowed in its present form, that is exactly what will happen.
  Mr. Rees-Davies: With respect, I think that the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. John Lee) is in cloud-cuckooland. If he goes on holiday with or in the hope of meeting a group of friends in a small paying guest establishment in which there are only three other bedrooms, one bathroom and one lavatory, does he really think that his wife and family will want to share accommodation if in the outcome he finds staying there a black Zambian of the lower class and a Polynesian—[HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] Do not say "Shame" and such tosh. For once, let us have a little honesty on these matters. The fact is that the hon. Gentleman will want to mix with his friends. It so happens that I can say these things because I have a great many friends from all parts of the world who are themselves coloured. If I went with one of my friends to a similar establishment, do hon. Members imagine that he would want to find there someone of a totally different type, character, class and everything else, any more than I would?

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  That is quite unrealistic, and it is what I cavil at in this part of the Bill.
  I have tried to bring into the open some of the further arguments which my right hon. Friend hinted at when he gave us the opportunity to indicate these aspects of this important matter. As I see it, on Clause 2, if the Bill is to work, it is essential to lay down in real terms either by clarification or by proviso what is meant by the words "other similar establishment", whether it is done here or in another place. If it is decided that it will not be defined as such—and I can see that it is very difficult—there should be an exclusion along the lines suggested by my right hon. Friend in terms of numbers to indicate that the small paying guest establishment is not included within the class.
  That is one aspect. If it is not to be done on Clause 2, it will be necessary later to have much more fundamental exemptions in Clause 7. Ft is all very well for hon. Members to try and argue, as did the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) by way of intervention, that certain classes such as trade unions and others can discriminate. But that is only drawing it on ethnic grounds. Where there is a whole practice of deliberate discrimination in the running of small establishments, if one wants to make the Bill an effective instrument, it would be more easy and satisfactory to exclude all this aspect.
  It is an understood fact that a hotel as such must not and cannot discriminate as a matter of ordinary common law. It owes its duty to the public at large and in that sense it is covered, although in practice we all know that certain types of person, not in relation to their colour or ethnic origin but in relation to their habits and practices, may be excluded from certain restaurants and hotels. As I indicated to the hon. Gentleman just now, that can be dressed up so easily as being discrimination on the grounds of race and colour.
  That is the practical side of it. It is because we are concerned with the practical aspects that I hope that the matter will be looked at carefully and that the Home Secretary will carry out the undertaking given to my right hon. Friend in Committee upstairs.
  Mr. Richard: I am grateful to the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) for making that speech because it revealed more clearly than anything I have heard so far or have read in the Press how little many people have understood the Bill. The hon. Gentleman could not have read the Bill properly and made that speech.
  It is clear from Clause 1 exactly what is caught by the Bill. What is made unlawful is discrimination on the grounds of colour, race or ethnic or national origins. If in his constituency he has a cosy little boarding house being run by one of these mythical widows about whom we hear so much from hon. Gentlemen opposite, and if she desires to publish in her brochure, "Only upper"—or it could be "medium" or "lower"—"class people need apply", she is entitled to do so. I disapprove of her going further—I trust that the hon. Gentleman takes the same view—and turning away a man whose skin happens to be black. That action is caught by the Bill. Being a lawyer —the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet will know what I mean by that—the hon. Gentleman should read the Bill again and not make such a speech until he has done so.
  Mr. Grieve: The House should be grateful for the breath of fresh air and common sense which my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) introduced. In contrast, the reply of the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) showed how much, in their anxiety, which I respect, to improve race relations, he and those who think like him ignore the realities of the situation in which this legislation is being introduced.
  The hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) referred to a seaside landlady who, for good and legitimate reasons, turned away a person of a different ethnic origin or colour from herself. He said that when the matter was brought to the attention of the Race Relations Board, everything would be put right, so that the landlady would have no cause for complaint or alarm. That ignores the character and often the education of many of those who run small boarding houses and similar establishments. Many of them are scared out of their wits at the mere sight of a document, and the thought of being taken

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  before a board or court fills them with fear.
  The authors of the Street Report, when considering the possible exemptions to the legislation which they advocated, suggested the application of the principle of personal, intimate proximity. It is against that test that one must consider restricting the number of boarders to 10 in this type of boarding establishment. We should be doing a grave disservice to the cause of race relations if we tried to import legislative sanctions into the ordinary private home of the individual.
  I agree with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing that it is not easy to see where the line should be drawn. In Committee I tabled an Amendment suggesting that the figure should be 20, although I held no special briefs for that number. That it should be drawn at ten or a little over goes absolutely against common sense, because that figure brings us into the realm of those who are not providing facilities on a large scale. These people are merely supplementing their incomes by taking people into their ordinary private homes. It is from the zone of the private home that this legislation should be excluded and I pray in aid the principle on which the authors of the Street Report made their proposals and suggest that the Government act in the same way.
  Another reason why we should be careful to exclude legislative sanctions in this realm is because of the type of person who runs this type of establishment. The hon. Member for Barons Court referred to the "mythical widow". If anything showed the lack of common sense which he and his like are bringing to this problem, the sneer inherent in that expression revealed it. The great bulk of small boarding houses are run by widows who are augmenting their incomes. If there is one class of the community of whom we in this House should take care it is the widow, and I am not ashamed of saying so.
  Dr. Winstanley: So that I understand precisely what is in the hon. and learned Gentleman's mind, would he comment on this example: if a widow—a real one and not a mythical one—running an intimate establishment takes in eight students, would he regard it as reason-
  316
  able if she said that she would not take in a Pakistani student as one of the eight?
  Mr. Grieve: What I regard as reasonable is that that widow should have complete and absolute control over whom she wishes to have under her own roof. That principle is enshrined in every freedom we respect, and to the extent that this legislation is cutting in and reducing that freedom, I am against it.
  Mr. Hogg: I can speak again only by leave of the House, but I hope that if I promise to be reasonably short I may have that leave.
  The only difference of principle between me and the Under-Secretary is a rather curious one, but I think that we on this side are probably right on that solitary difference. The Under-Secretary shook me at first by suggesting, and it may well turn out to be true, that whilst he would agree that there should be an exemption limit—whether for reasons of principle or whether for reasons of convenience does not matter—it was already adequately dealt with under Clause 7 rather than under this Clause. He said—and I thought that it was a very truthful remark, and I agree with it—that though we are at difference about this matter, the difference is not as much as people might think. We are at difference about it, and I think that we are now in a position to come to a conclusion by way of a Division—without, I hope, much ill feeling on either side.
  I would only add that the debate has ranged rather more widely than that between the two Front Benches, and I have been very glad of the way in which it has developed, because it has ventilated a certain amount of feeling. But I would, on the whole, side in this matter with my hon. Friends. Obviously, when dealing with very small operators in this field we have to draw some kind of a line somewhere between convenience and individual liberty on the one hand and principle and dislike of discrimination on the other.
  Perhaps when we discuss the next Amendment—and certainly on Third Reading—we will be able to go into that matter in a little more detail with profit to all of us, but whilst I am speaking simply on the question of boarding

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  houses in the kind of situation that has been developed I would only say this. There is only one freedom ever worth having by anybody, and that is the freedom to do wrong. I hasten to change my language to something which is more theologically acceptable, and say freedom to do what other people think is wrong, because if one only does what other people think is right one is not free at all.
  I would therefore say to hon. Members opposite who have tended to get a little excitable about this Amendment and, in particular, a little excitable about my hon., gallant but not always very theological Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies), that he
  was theologically more correct than they were.
  One must, in the end, distinguish between what is morally reprehensible and what creates important social consequences. What creates important social consequences is something about which Parliament ought to legislate. What is morally reprehensible but does not so create, is something we should ignore. Therefore, I shall advise my hon. Friends, for one reason or another, to join me in dividing on the Amendment.
  Question put, That the Amendment be made: —
  The House divided: Ayes 151, Noes 234.

  Division No. 271.]

  AYES

  [8.30 p.m.

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Gresham Cooke, R.

  Onslow, Crantey

  Astor, John

  Grieve, Percy

  Osborn, John (Hatlam)

  Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n & M'd'n)

  Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

  Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

  Awdry, Daniel

  Gurden, Harold

  Page, Graham (Crosby)

  Baker, Kenneth (Acton)

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

  Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)

  Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

  Peel, John

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

  Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

  Percival, Ian

  Biffen, John

  Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

  Pounder, Rafton

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel

  Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

  Pym, Fancis

  Black, Sir Cyril

  Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Quennell, Miss J. M.

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

  Higglns, Terence L.

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Body, Richard

  Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

  Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

  Bossom, Sir Clive

  Holland, Philip

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Brewis, John

  Hordern, Peter

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Hornby, Richard

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Bryan, Paul

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

  Buck, Antony (Colchester)

  Hutchison, Michael Clark

  Royle, Anthony

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Russell, Sir Ronald

  Burden, F. A.

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

  Campbell, B. (Oldham, West)

  Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Sharpies, Richard

  Carlisle, Mark

  Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)

  Silvester, Frederick

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith

  Smith, Dudley (W'wick &L'mington)

  Cordle, John

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Speed, Keith

  Corfield, F. V.

  Kirk, Peter

  Stainton, Keith

  Costain, A. P.

  Kitson, Timothy

  Summers, Sir Spencer

  Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

  Langford-Holt, Sir John

  Temple, John M.

  Crouch, David

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

  Currie, G. B. H.

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

  Dance, James

  Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)

  van Straubenzee, W. R.

  Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)

  McAdden, 8ir Stephen

  Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

  Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

  Vickers, Dame Joan

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Macleod, Rt. Hn. lain

  Walker, Peter (Worcester)

  Dodds-Parker, Douglas

  Maddan, Martin

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Drayson, G. B.

  Maginnis, John E.

  ward, Dame Irene

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Marten, Neil

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Elliott.R.W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)

  Maude, Angus

  Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

  Emery, Peter

  Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C

  Williams, Donald (Dudley)

  Errington, Sir Eric

  Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)

  wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

  Eyre, Reginald

  Mortro, Hector

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Fortescue, Tim

  Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

  Wood, Rt Hn Richard

  Galbraith, Hn. T. G.

  Mott-Radcryffe, Sir Charles

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Gibson-Watt, David

  Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

  Worsley, Marcus

  Glover, Sir Douglas

  Murton, Oscar

  Younger, Hn. George

  Goodhart, Philip

  Nabarro, Sir Cerald

  Goodhew, Victor

  Neave, Airey

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Cower, Raymond

  NichollS, Sir Harmar

  Mr. Jasper More and

  Grant, Anthony

  Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

  Mr. Bernard Weatherill.

  Grant-Ferris, R.

  Nott, John

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Freeson, Reginald

  Miller, Dr. M. S.

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Alldritt, Walter

  Gardner, Tony

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

  Anderson, Donald

  Ginsburg, David

  Molloy, William

  Archer, Peter

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Gregory, Arnold

  Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

  Grey, Charles (Durham)

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

  Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

  Morris, John (Aberavon)

  Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

  Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)

  Moyle, Roland

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  Murray, Albert

  Barnes, Michael

  Hamilton, James (Botthwell)

  Neal, Harold

  Barnett, Joel

  Hamling, William

  Newens, Stan

  Baxter, William

  Harman, William

  Ogden, Eric

  Beaney, Alan

  Harper, Joseph

  Orbach, Maurice

  Bence, Cyril

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Orme, Stanley

  Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)

  Haseldine, Norman

  Oswald, Thomas

  Besell, Peter

  Hattersley, Roy

  Owen, will (Morpeth)

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Hazell, Bert

  Paget, R. T.

  Blackburn, F.

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Palmer, Arthur

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Henig, Stanley

  Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles

  Boardman, H. (Leigh)

  Hilton, W. S.

  Park, Trevor

  Booth Albert

  Hooley, Frank

  Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

  Boston, Terence

  Horner, John

  Pavitt, Laurence

  Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

  Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

  Boyden, James

  Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

  Pentland, Norman

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

  Howie, W.

  Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)

  Bray, Dr. Jeremy

  Hoy, James

  Randall, Harry

  Brown, Rt. Hn. George (Belper)

  Huckfield, Leslie

  Rankin, John

  Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

  Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

  Rhodes, Geoffrey

  Buchan, Norman

  Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

  Richard, Ivor

  Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

  Hunter, Adam

  Robertson, John (Paisley)

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Hynd, John

  Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth(St.P'c'as)

  Cant, R. B.

  Janner, Sir Barnett

  Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow,E.)

  Carmichael, Neil

  Jeger,Mrs.Lena(H'b'n &St.P'cras,S.)

  Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

  Chapman, Donald

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Rose, Paul

  Coleman, Donald

  Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechlord)

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William

  Concannon, J. D.

  Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

  Shaw, Arnold (llford, S.)

  Conlan, Bernard

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Sheldon, Robert

  Corbet, Mrs. Freda

  Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn(W.Ham,S.)

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

  Short,Rt.Hn.Edward(N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

  Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Judd, Frank

  Short, Mrs. Renée(W'hampton,N.E.)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Kelley, Richard

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Dalyed, Tarn

  Kenyon, Clifford

  Silverman, Julius

  Darling, Rt. Hn. George

  Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

  Skeffington, Arthur

  Davidson, Arthur (Accrlngton)

  Lawson, George

  Slater, Joseph

  Davidson, James(Aberdeenshire,W.)

  Ledger, Ron

  Small, William

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Lee, John (Reading)

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)

  Davies, S. 0. (Merythr)

  Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)

  Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

  Dell, Edmund

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Swain, Thomas

  Dempsey, James

  Lomas, Kenneth

  Taverne, Dick

  Dewar, Donald

  Luard, Evan

  Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

  Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

  Lubbock, Eric

  Thornton, Ernest

  Dickens, James

  Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

  Urwin, T. W.

  Dobson, Ray

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Varley, Eric G.

  Doig, Peter

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

  Dunn, James A.

  McBride, Neil

  Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)

  Dunnett, Jack.

  MacColl, James

  Walden, Brian (All Saints)

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

  Macdonald, A. H.

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &C'b'e)

  McGuire, Michael

  Watkins, David (Consett)

  Eadie, Alex

  McKay, Mrs. Margaret

  Weitzman, David

  Edelman, Maurice

  Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross & Crom'ty)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

  Whitaker, Ben

  Ellis. John

  Mackintosh, John P.

  White, Mrs. Eirene

  Ennals, David

  Maclennan, Robert

  Whitlock, William

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Wilkins, W. A.

  Evans, Gwynfor (C'marthen)

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Faulds, Andrew

  Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

  Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

  Fernyhough, E.

  Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

  Williams, Clifford (Abertitlery)

  Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

  Mallalieu,J.P.W.(HudderSfield,E.)

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Fletcher, Raymond (Ilketton)

  Manuel, Archie

  Winnick, David

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Marquand, David

  Winstanley, Dr. M. P.

  Foot, Rt. Hn. Sir Dingle (Ipswich)

  Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy

  Yates, Victor

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  Maxwell, Robert

  Ford, Ben

  Mendelson, J. J.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Forrester, John

  Mlkardo, Ian

  Mr. John McCann and

  Fraier, John (Norwood)

  Millan, Bruce

  Mr. loan L. Evans.

Clause 3

  EMPLOYMENT
  Amendments made: No. 14, in page 2, line 14, leave out from beginning to 'him' and insert:
  'or deliberately omitting to employ'.
  No. 15, in page 2, line 18, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.—[Mr. Hattersley.]
  The Under-Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity (Mr. Roy Hattersley): I beg to move Amendment No. 16, in page 2, line 22 after 'persons', insert 'of the like qualifications'.
  This Amendment stems from a fear expressed in Committee, or, at least, expressed by some members of the Committee, that the Clause as it stands would give rise to danger in a situation in which an employer chose applicant A rather than applicant B because applicant B lacked the talent, education, experience or aptitude of applicant A.
  As it stands, the Clause makes no reference to the qualifications of two rival applicants for a job. I advised the Committee that the phrase "in like circumstances" met the point and that the man who chose one candidate rather than another because of character or qualifications could not be subject to the penalties under the Bill. However, the Committee asked me to be more specific, and I agreed. This Amendment meets that concern.
  Sir D. Renton: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I think that he has met the point, and I advise the House to accept the Amendment.
  Mr. Gower: I regard the Amendment as a big improvement, but I have one question. The term "qualifications" is a rather special one having a definite connotation. Does it embrace the wider matters of character or other qualities which also might be important?
  Mr. Hattersley: Yes, it does. I tried to list the sort of attributes covered. Aptitude, character and experience are as much included as any formal qualifications.
  Amendment agreed to.

Clause 4

  TRADE UNIONS, AND EMPLOYERS' AND TRADE ORGANISATIONS
  Amendments made: No. 17, in page 2, line 39, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.
  No. 18, in page 3, line 2, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.—[Mr. Hattersley.]
  Mr. Hattersley: I beg to move Amendment No. 19, in page 3, line 8, leave out from 'organisations' to end of line 9 and insert—
  'concerned with the carrying on of trades, businesses, professions or occupations'.
  This Amendment also is designed to meet a concern expressed in Committee, concern that the words
  "organisations of persons engaged in any trade, business, profession or occupation"
  might include not only trade unions, trade associations and employers' associations, as was intended, but also social clubs or recreational clubs which might be organisations of such people, that is, people of a certain trade, business or profession.
  Irrespective of the view of the House on discrimination in private places—mine is simple and unequivocal—it is not the Government's intention that the Bill should cover such discrimination. The Amendment is designed, therefore, to narrow the scope of the Clause in a precise and specific way so that it relates to the function of the organisation rather than to the sort of person who is a member of the organisation. Thus, the ambiguity is removed and the intention is made clear, that is, to avoid discrimination in trade unions, employers' associations, trade associations and the like, and not private clubs which might be composed of such people.
  Sir D. Renton: The point is a very fine one, but I agree that the Amendment makes an improvement and I welcome it.
  Amendment agreed to.

Clause 5

  HOUSING ACCOMMODATION, AND BUSINESS AND OTHER PREMISES
  Amendment made: No. 20, in page 3, line 16, leave out 'neglecting' and insert 'deliberately omitting'.—[Mr. MacColl]
  8.45 p.m.
  Mr. MacColl: I beg to move Amendment No. 21, in line 18, at end insert:
  (b) against any person occupying any such accommodation, premises or other land, by deliberately treating him differently from other such occupiers in the like circumstances; or
  The Amendment arose from a discussion in Committee in which my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) in particular made the point that it was not enough to deal with the actual disposal of an interest in a house, but that the Clause should also apply to any consequential management which might take place after letting. He said that it might be possible for a landlord to make more severe terms for the payment of rent to try to make life unpleasant for the immigrant, and that that should be covered.
  I said in reply that I thought that most of the matters which would arise would come under either harassment or unlawful eviction and that probably it would not be necessary to include them, but I also said, correcting myself, that as the object of the Bill was to have a conciliation rather than criminal proceedings, it might be appropriate to do something about it.
  The Amendment would deal with cases coming under the Rent Act, but would also deal with the kind of case to which my hon. Friend referred, which would not quite come under the Act, cases like discrimination in the terms of the rent, its payment and so on. I think that the Amendment will be a help to tenants.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendment made: No. 22, in line 20, after 'by', insert 'deliberately'. —[Mr. Ennals.]

Clause 6
  ADVERTISEMENTS AND NOTICES
  Amendment made: No. 23, in page 3, line 26, leave out from 'act' to end of line 27 and insert 'of discrimination, whether or not it'.—[Mr. Ennals.]
Clause 7

  EXCEPTION IN THE CASE OF RESIDENTIAL ACCOMMODATION
  Amendment made: No. 24, in page 3, line 37, after 'discriminate', insert 'against any other person'.—[Mr. Ennals.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving): The next Amendment is Government Amendment No. 25, with which we may discuss Government Amendment No. 26, Amendment No. 27, in page 3, line 40, leave out from 'premises' to end of line 12 on page 4.
  Government Amendments No. 29 and No. 31, Amendment No. 32, in page 4, line 10, after 'access', insert:
  'but limited to water closet, kitchen or cooking facilities, bathroom or washing facilities, and any living room'.
  Government Amendment No. 33, in page 4, line 12, at end insert:
  (2) Premises shall be treated for the purposes of subsection (1) above as small premises if—

  (a) in the case of premises comprising residential accommodation for one or more households (under separate letting or similar agreements) in addition to the accommodation occupied by the landlord, there is not normally residential accommodation for more than two such households and only the landlord and any member of his household reside in the accommodation occupied by him;

  (b) in the case of premises not falling within paragraph (a) above, there is not normally residential accommodation on the premises for more than six persons in addition to the landlord and any members of his household.

  (3) During the two years beginning with the commencement of this Act, subsection (2)(b) above shall have effect as if for the reference to six persons there were substituted a reference to twelve persons';
  and the Amendments to it in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), in subsection (2,b) leave out 'six' and insert 'twelve', and to leave out subsection (3);and Government Amendments No. 34 and No. 37.
  Mr. MacColl: I beg to move Amendment No. 25, in page 3, line 38, at end insert:
  'at the time of the disposal—
  (a) the premises are treated for the purposes of this subsection as small premises; and'.

  325
  This is an important group of Amendments. They are the Amendments to which I referred in the debate on Clause 2 in which we have tried to meet the undertaking we gave to look at the various points made in our discussions about accommodation shared by more than one household, or where there was more than one family. We have also taken advantage of this to make some improvements in the presentation of the Clause which make it rather easier to follow.
  The Amendment introduces a term of art in the Clause—"small premises" Amendment No. 33 discusses what the term means. Instead of merely saying that the landlord "resides", Amendment No. 26 says "resides and intends to continue to reside". This is to meet a point made in Committee that it might be possible for a landlord to claim exemption from the Bill because he was residing at the time and subsequently to sell the property. This makes it clear that it is intended that he would be exempted only if he intended to stay on and live in the premises as his own home.
  The next point is that there are two distinctions, and it is made clear that these are alternatives and not supplementary to each other. These come in the new subsection (2), which makes clear the two tests, one or other of which must be fulfilled, in addition to the landlord's living on the property. One test is that in addition to the accommodation occupied by the landlord, there is not normally residential accommodation for more than two other households, and that the landlord and members of his household are the only other people residing in that piece of the accommodation which is occupied by him.
  The alternative for exceptions is that there is not normal residential accommodation on the premises for more than six persons in addition to the landlord and any member of his household. That is an increase from the figure which is in the Bill at the moment, and it is designed to meet the point.
  Subsection (3) introduces phasing. I was rather sorry—I put it no stronger than that—to find that the right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes), who first suggested that we ought to include phasing in this side of the Bill as well
  326
  as the employment side, had put his name to an Amendment to get phasing out of the Bill. I thought we were meeting his point. The phasing that we propose is that for two years there should be 12, instead of six persons. As in the case of employment, the point is that where these provisions will come as a shock to people living in small households, they will have two years in which to accustom themselves to what the Bill means. It will also make it easier to explain to people the idea. There are parts of the Bill which deal with education. It gives people more time before the full impact comes.
  Then we deal with some other points in the Clause which describe and define what is meant by "small premises". They are defined in subsection (2) in the way in which I have described.
  Mr. Mark Carlisle: This is the first time that I have spoken in any of the discussions on the Bill. I believe that we are now on the most important Clause in it. It is the one Clause which, as it stands, would tempt me to vote against the Third Reading of the Bill, although on balance I do not intend to do so.
  I object to the part of the Clause and the Amendments to it which still retain as a necessary part of exception for any persons letting any accommodation the fact that they have to share part of the living accommodation of the house with the person to whom they are letting.
  The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government said just now that there were two alternatives for exception. One was where there were two households or less, where the premises were let as separate dwellings, or where there were not normally more than six people residing there, and the persons were, presumably, lodgers taken into the house. What the hon. Gentleman failed to say was that the Amendments still require as a qualification for exemption the fact that they must share part of the living accommodation.
  The Amendments do not cover what I regard as a very important case—that of the person who lets part of his house as a self-contained dwelling. I should express an interest here, since I live in a house the top floor of which is let as a

  327
  self-contained flat. The flat has, although I do not think it matters for the purpose of the Bill, a separate entrance and the people who live in it and the rest of us in the house do not share accommodation. However, in letting that flat, we are letting it to people who live in very close proximity to us.
  While I hope and believe that I am completely free of colour prejudice, and while I should be willing and happy to have as tenants in the flat people from any part of the world, nevertheless, I believe that there is a principle here in that the owner of property should have the choice of who his tenants are to be in his own house, and I would fight for that right. Where we are concerned with extremely limited accommodation of this kind, it is unfortunate that the Government have not attempted to exempt from the provisions of the Bill the position of a person who has, say, one self-contained flat in his house.
  Probably I have put the point badly but I believe that a principle is involved here. Indeed, this is a clash, and an extremely difficult clash, of principles. On the one hand, most of us would say that not only do we regret any form of discrimination but we believe that the law has a part to play in creating a structure which would discourage prejudice; on the other hand, I believe that the individual owner of property has a right to dispose of his own property or part of it in the way he wishes and that, however irresponsible his prejudice may be—whether or not he likes persons with red hair or long hair, for instance—he is, when letting his own premises, entitled to express that prejudice in deciding who he should have in that accommodation when the tenant will be living in close proximity to him.
  I do not think, therefore, that the Amendments go far enough. I regret that the Government have not seen fit to exclude the prejudice of the individual when letting part of his own premises as against prejudice which may be expressed from a business point of view when letting a block of flats, for example. I will not vote against Third Reading but if there is anything in the Bill which tempts me to do so it is the fact that the Government have not given way on this point and have not brought in an
  328
  Amendment to permit the individual living in his own premises to express prejudices, however ridiculous they may be, when letting part of his own house. This should apply irrespective of whether or not he and the tenant happen to have to share a bathroom or a dining room or anything else.
  9.0 p.m.
  Mr. Paul B. Rose: I have known the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) for a long time and I know that everything he says is said with the greatest sincerity. He is caught by this dilemma of personal freedom in the disposal and use of one's property and another freedom. It is this other freedom which tends to be underrated and perhaps underestimated by certain hon. Members. It is the freedom from discrimination. Just as one upholds freedom from libel or slander as against freedom of speech, so there is the hon. Member's dilemma. I take issue with him, because he fails to distinguish between intimate contact when facilities are shared and when contact is far more remote, when the premises are self-contained and separate. When they are self-contained and separate, there is a different principle.
  I wish to address myself to Amendment No. 32 which stands in my name. I have suggested it because, as the Clause stands, it could provide a serious loophole by which its legitimate and reasonable purpose could be defeated and which might permit a whole number of new exemptions which were not envisaged in the wording suggested by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. In my view, it is not unreasonable to define with which shared facilities we are concerned, but there is no attempt, either in the Clause as it stands or as it would be amended, to define what we mean by shared accommodation. The only attempt at that at one time was to deal with means of access. If we can go so far as to talk about means of access as something different from shared accommodation, we could be much more specific and say exactly what we mean by shared facilities.
  Mr. MacColl: I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the Government Amendments No. 31 and No. 32 which will deal with that.
  Mr. Rose: I have seen those Amendments which deal with storage accommodation and means of access and use the phrase "relevant accommodation". That does not meet the point which I am about to make, because, notwithstanding the wording suggested by the Amendments, it would be possible for a landlord to provide what he might call a common room, lounge, or parlour to which, he said, he gave access to all persons on the premises. He could establish a sort of legal fiction that a room was not part of the premises let to a particular tenant and he could then say that the tenants shared it.
  That is why I suggest in my Amendment that we define precisely what we mean by shared premises. I refer to water closet, kitchen or cooking facilities, bathroom or washing facilities and not a living-room. That goes wide enough, because those are the places where in normal living one would come into contact with other people resident in the same premises. It would be going far too wide if, for example, we exempted a room where people got together for a talk in the evening.
  Mr. Gower: Would the hon. Gentleman extend that classification to include in certain circumstances houses where a common entrance was unavoidable?
  Mr. Rose: I think that the hon. Gentleman is missing my point. There is a reasonable exemption for shared facilities or shared accommodation. I am saying that it is a reasonable objection in the facilities which I have mentioned, but it would not be reasonable just because access happened to be shared, or because there was a common room, or a sort of lounge, which was shared. I accept that it is reasonable where one would have to share a bathroom and that is why I am trying to make the definition more specific. I do not criticise the Government for making the concession contained in their Amendments, but I believe that the definition is now even more important.
  It is perfectly reasonable to ask my hon. Friends on the Front Bench if, before this matter is dealt with in another place, they will look at it again to see whether the definition of shared accommodation can be written into the Bill. Without it, it will be only too easy for
  330
  someone intent upon driving a coach and horses through the Bill to create the sort of legal fiction where, by saying that a certain room is at the disposal of all the people in the premises, the whole purpose of the Bill will be defeated. I ask my hon. Friend to comment on this, and to undertake that he will look at it further.
  Mr. Grieve: I am sure that the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) will forgive me if I do not attempt to follow him in the matters which he has discussed. I cannot help feeling, if I am to comment on them briefly, that he is straining after a gnat. I would not wish for one moment to see the definition of "shared accommodation" whittled down—quite the contrary. I wish to follow a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle). I am deeply grateful to him for taking it up.
  I took it up in Committee and tabled Amendments designed to exclude from the scope of the Bill houses subdivided into two or three, but not more, units. I entirely share my hon. Friend's disappointment that the Government have not seen fit, on reconsideration, although we divided on this in Committee, to think again about this problem. If one applies the test of initimate personal proximity, what could come more clearly within the scope of that test than the small terraced, semi-detached or even detached house in which the householder, in order to augment his or her income, has subdivided it into two or possibly three units? In the majority of cases, the house is divided into two.
  To say that if the kitchen, bathroom and lavatory, because they are the most ordinary examples of shared accommodation, are not shared, then one has entirely separate households, and not intimate personal proximity, seems to me an absolute nonsense of the application of this principle to the legislation. I do not have the personal experience of my hon. Friend because I do not live in a house divided in that way. In Committee I spoke on behalf of those who had converted such houses, and earlier this evening I spoke on behalf of widows.
  I hope that I will not bore the House by returning to this cause again. The type of person most likely to have converted her house is the widow, who finds that the

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  accommodation left to her by her husband is too great, and who serves an extremely useful social purpose in subdividing her house, perhaps providing accommodation for a young couple. It is a shocking thing that the State should now intervene and seek to exercise control, however remote, over the choice of the person living in the other part of the accommodation.
  When the people of this country realise what is being done to them by this part of this legislation—I think a great many of them do already—it is then that the legislation is most likely to defeat the ends of those bringing it forward. Instead of improving race relations it is likely to embitter them. What could more embitter someone than that, when they should have part of their house on the market, the hitherto irrefutable right to exercise their choice as to its tenant should be challenged? Someone could, possibly quite wrongly, say that they were being discriminated against and the person who had let the accommodation would have to go before the Race Relations Board, and explain their case, with all the inadequacies of the power of explanation which such people often have. It cannot improve the cause of good relations; it can only harm it. I ask the Government to think again about this.
  Mr. Rose: To denigrate this merely because the complainant may fail and be wrong is entirely illogical. On the same basis one would say that the whole machinery of our civil law should be abandoned because frequently plaintiffs fail in their case.
  Mr. Grieve: The hon. Gentleman fails to realise that for the first time the Legislature is interfering with what has hitherto been regarded as the fundamental right of our people to say who they shall have under their roof. The burden on those who seek to do that, however good their reason for doing it, it very great; it is enormous. I find the interference in the private household, whether the kitchen, lavatory and bathroom are shared or not, absolutely intolerable. I think that that would be the reaction of the vast majority of people in this country.
  I hope for the sake, not only of our ancient and fundamental liberties, but of the cause which I believe Government
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  Front Bench spokesmen and those behind them have at heart, of good race relations in this country, that the Government will think again about this matter.
  Dr. Miller: The hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) talked about depriving people of the right to decide whom they should have as tenants and who should occupy their houses. The people still have that right. I call his attention to the object of the Bill, which is merely that one should not discriminate on certain grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origin. This holds good for the fears which the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) has in connection with his dilemma about shared accommodation or accommodation which is separate but where people nevertheless live in close proximity.
  Why should the principle that discrimination on the grounds mentioned in the Bill be maintained? The Bill does not prevent people from deciding who should occupy their premises. I would go so far as to say that it may have a beneficial effect, because in many instances more care should be taken in letting or disposing of accommodation of this kind. It is wrong to say that the Bill should apply only to large premises, because it is in small premises that the greatest hurt and offence occur. We must always remember the tremendous affront and offence given to a group of innocent people who are our citizens and who in every respect may be admirable tenants but the colour of whose skin might not be suitable to certain prejudiced individuals.
  All that is requested is that discrimination should not take place on grounds of colour, or ethnic or national origin. In other words, no one denies people the right to prevent someone from occupying premises which belong to the owner on any other ground except those which I have mentioned. I do not think that the establishing of a principle in this respect is something with which the hon. Member for Runcorn would disagree.
  9.15 p.m.
  Mr. Carlisle: Surely, there is this trouble. Let us leave aside for the moment the question of colour and come to nationality. With great respect to the hon. Member, let us say that a Scotsman comes to one's door to take a flat. One

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  may say, "I do not like his face, I do not want him", but under the Bill there is the danger that the applicant would go on to say that he was turned down because he was a Scotsman. The landlord would be in great difficulty in replying that he refused him, not because he was a Scotsman, but because he did not like the man's face.
  Dr. Miller: That is precisely the point. A balance is involved. The owner of the property might not like the person's face or the way he looks, and the person might then take objection and feel that the reason why he was refused the premises was that he was a Scotsman or was coloured or whatever reason is applicable under the Bill. When the complaint is made to the Race Relations Board, it would soon be obvious that the reason for refusal was not ethnic or national origin or colour but was something entirely different. That is the important point. This is where the balance is involved.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Interventions must be brief.
  Mr. Carlisle: The hon. Member is making his speech, Mr. Speaker, and had kindly given way to me.
  Mr. Speaker: My profound apologies to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Kelvin-grove (Dr. Miller).
  Mr. Carlisle: I agree that with a conciliation stage the landlord might be able to show that he turned the applicant down, not because he was a Scotsman, but because he did not like the man's face. The danger is, however, that a person in that position would be afraid to refuse to let the flat to a person whom he did not like because he would say to himself, "Although I do not like him, he is also a Scotsman."
  Mr. Speaker: Order. With more justification, I repeat interventions must be brief.
  Mr. Carlisle: I apologise, Mr. Speaker. If I may conclude, the landlady or landlord would be afraid to refuse the person because he was a Scotsman or was coloured in the belief that he or she would be taken to court.
  Dr. Miller: On balance that is not a bad thing at all, because if the landlord wishes to refute the allegation that he
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  has refused on the ground of colour or for the other reasons set out in the Bill, he is at liberty to do so. If he does not want to get himself involved in any possibility of proceedings, I submit with humility that on balance this is a good thing. It is not necessary that every object should be achieved—indeed, every object will not be achieved—but one has to have a balance in this.
  I suggest that to reduce the number of people to which this provision applies by making it not applicable to smaller households would destroy one of the main objects of the Bill. It is obvious from all reports that people who are being discriminated against find the greatest difficulty when they go to households of that kind. In most instances, it is the rent of only the smaller households that immigrants can afford. I would suggest therefore that to increase the numbers, thereby making the provision apply only to larger establishments, would be against the principles of the Bill.
  Mr. Gower: With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I think he is living in a world of make-believe in considering this problem. Enough has been said by my hon. Friends to show that these Amendments are not adequate. I hope the hon. Gentleman will realise that this is a highly personal relationship; it is not a normal relationship to have someone under one's own roof, or even to be in close proximity at the entrance, where there is a common entrance, or even a common drive; and the Clause, even with the Amendment, will not operate in anything like the manner which the hon. Gentleman suggested.
  What will happen will be that the uninitiated widow who has been mentioned may well be afraid not to let her premises for some quite extraneous reason, but the cleverer person will not let at all. The person who is initiated and who can see ahead will refuse to let at all and will keep the place vacant until such time as she has a tenant of her own choice. Therefore, it will not operate fairly between two persons. It will operate most unfairly unless there is a further Amendment. I implore the Government to look again at this matter in that light.
  I accept that the Amendment is a slight improvement but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) suggested, where there is a

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  letting of part of a house, with the owner and the new tenant in constant proximity, perhaps every morning and every evening, in those circumstances the objective of creating more accommodation for persons who are short of it, people for immigrant communities and so on, would be defeated. We need to create more accommodation, and we would be defeating the objective unless we widened the exemptions which are granted by these modest Amendments.
  Mr. Heffer: I wonder whether the hon. Gentlemen understand the situation when they speak in terms of shared accommodation or separate accommodation under the same roof. I have a feeling that, apart from the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) who gave his own personal experience, it has not been the experience of many hon. Members opposite to be involved in this sort of situation.
  I understand very well the position that could arise with shared accommodation, in the sense of a shared bathroom, shared toilet facilities, a shared kitchen or possibly a communal room. I understand that this could lead to all sorts of problems which would never arise with separate accommodation in the sense of a completely self-contained flat. What do we mean by "close proximity"? It would mean that somebody in a self-contained flat, possibly in the upstairs part of a house, would come down the stairs in the morning and go out of the front door to work, or come into the front door at night and go up to the self-contained flat. That is the sort of proximity we are talking about.
  That is the reality of the situation, which is very different from the situation that would exist with two women at night using the same kitchen facilities. I know about shared accommodation. I mentioned to the Committee my own experience of living with a Jewish family for seven years in genuine shared accommodation, where we did not eat the same foods, but we shared the toilet facilities, the cooking facilities and we both had bedrooms on the first floor. I know about shared accommodation and I know the problems which can arise from close proximity where two women share a kitchen. However, that is not the same thing, and it must be kept in perspective.
  Once again, the hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) drew the
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  picture of the poor widow woman. He did not use the name "Mrs. Murphy", who was referred to frequently in Committee. Indeed, I remember referring to her myself and saying that I knew all about her because she lives in my constituency. The point is that the widow woman who lets off one or two rooms in the form of shared accommodation is not touched under the Bill. Therefore, the problem does not arise.
  Mr. Grieve: But the widow who divides her house into two, even though it be a small house with thin walls and ceilings and a small garden, is.
  Mr. Heffer: In such a case, the accommodation becomes a self-contained flat and creates the sort of proximity that I have referred to already.
  There have been the Mrs. Murphies who themselves have been prejudiced in the first place but who have taken in coloured families. Originally, she was not happy with the idea, but she took in the family and eventually has been seen holding the baby, looking after the children and becoming part of the family. Those of us who live in areas where there are coloured populations know what happens in such cases.
  I ask hon. Members to keep matters in perspective. I understand the problems and fears involved, but we are discussing separate accommodation and, in these circumstances, I think that the Bill covers all the fears that hon. Members have expressed.
  Mr. Deedes: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle), I find that this part of the Bill brings me closer to direct conflict with it than any other section. What I have heard of the discussions so far in no way reduces my feeling, partly because every hon. Member is speaking from his own experience, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) has just done and as my hon. Friend did. The simple fact is that we shall not be able with exactitude to determine the conditions which cover the wide miscellany of instances which will arise under these provisions.
  As my hon. Friend said, this is the most personal and perhaps the most difficult area into which the Bill takes us. We are dealing with no past experience

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  and very little data by way of a background. In a sense, we are guessing what will touch people here or there. As the hon. Member for Walton has just done most reasonably, we talk about close proximity. That may be defined in a dezen different circumstances and in a hundred different ways. We shall discover this as we go along.
  I do not want to delay discussion about this except to express the view which I share with my hon. Friend, but I think that this part of the Bill ought to make us very careful of any assumption that the Measure will last for three or five years and will be beyond change or remedy after it is passed tonight.
  There are many people with strong views about race relations who feel that this is the last chance in the sense that it will be the last Measure for a long time and will become the definitive Statute on the subject. They think that what we do here will be final. But if there is any part of the Bill which makes me hope that that is not so and about which we shall want to consider amending legislation in the light of experience, it is that with which we are dealing now.
  However sincerely hon. Members apply their minds to this problem and speak from their experience and from the experience of their constituents, we cannot—even the Home Secretary cannot, with all the assistance at his disposal —guarantee to get this right first time. Some of this legislation is, therefore, bound to be wrong. I hope, therefore, that we will approach the possibility of amending legislation with an open mind, remembering that changes may be necessary in due course.
  9.30 p.m.
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I wish to concentrate on Amendment No. 27, which seeks to exclude shared accommodation, as mentioned in subsection (l)(c), and which is designed to delete subsections (1)(a) and (1)(b) which, in any event, the Government propose to delete. I commend the Amendment as being the way in principle to consider this whole matter.
  The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) approaches this matter with a complete disregard of the principle that is involved. There is a direct conflict here between the principle
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  that there should not be discrimination on grounds of colour or race, with which the Bill deals in part, and the principle that there should not be invasion of the personal privacy of an individual in his own home. A person in his home has, I believe, an absolute right to discriminate against everybody.
  If I dislike Jews or coloured people, if I am an Ulsterman and object to those who come from Southern Ireland or if I dislike the Chinese, I have every right to discriminate in my own home. If, for reasons of prejudice, I have become, as is referred to in Mau Mau, so persecuted by a particular sect that I can no longer stand them—and there are people throughout the country, and in the party opposite, who would under no circumstances have an ex-member of the Nazi Party in their homes if he was a German and who would be objecting, therefore, on ethnic grounds—[Interruption.]
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I will give way shortly. I wish to be explicit about this. The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) knows this.
  Mr. Rose Mr. Rose rose—
  Mr. Rees-Davies: Would the hon. Gentleman accept a Nazi in his home who was a German?
  Dr. Miller: I would certainly not object to any German coming into my home—
  Mr. Rees-Davies: I was putting the question to the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackely, who is of the Jewish faith and who would be absolutely justified in refusing to have a Nazi or ex-Nazi in his home. I would agree with him.
  Mr. Rose: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I would be perfectly happy to welcome a German into my home? Is he also aware that to discriminate against a Nazi would be to discriminate on grounds of his politics and beliefs, inherent in his being a Nazi, and not because he is a German, which is no fault of his, any more than it is the hon. Gentleman's fault that he is what he is, unfortunate though that is?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: That is not true. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It is a well

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  known, perfectly proper and reasonable fact that those of the Jewish faith would be singularly unlikely to accept Germans into their homes at the present time. [Interruption.]
  Several Hon. Members rose․
  Mr. Speaker: Order.We can debate this matter calmly.
  Mr. Heffer: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we in Liverpool, as trade unionists and as members of the Labour Party, have been inviting young German trade unionists to Liverpool for many years and that many of our Jewish colleagues have been accepting them gladly into their homes?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: Of course, I entirely accept that statement but, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, it is quite irrelevant to my point. What I am pointing out is that we have an absolute conflict here between two principles, and the House must face it. It is the conflict between whether or not it is believed that an Englishman's home is his castle, and that he is entitled to discriminate in his own home but not outside it. I was merely seeking to point that out as a fact, and to say that we are faced with this position. Hon. Member, opposite always try to have their cake and eat it. They will not face the fact that there is here a fundamental conflict of principle.
  I believe that a man should be entitled in his own home to decide, on prejudice or any other grounds, either to have or refuse anyone in that home. I am entirely in favour of a Bill, and this Bill, in so far as it seeks to prevent discrimination in jobs, and outside homes—in hotels, for instance, and many other places. But I say that in his own home, whether or not it is shared accommodation, a man ought to be entitled to do exactly as he pleases, and that no one at all in this country, least of all the Government, should have any power to interfere with the way in which he seeks to operate the management of his own home. I hope that at least we can agree on that point.
  It is not a crime to have a prejudice. It is only a crime to express it in circumstances which will violate the accepted rules of human conduct. I may intensely dislike some particular form of colour, or
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  class or nation—so many other hon. Members—either for good cause or no cause. It is no crime in this country to be able to feel that, but in one's own home it ought not to be any crime to express it.
  How can one make the situation plainer? Suppose an individual has a violent objection to the Jewish race, wishes to express it in the privacy of his own home but, perforce, has had thrust on him someone upstairs of the Jewish nationality. That will obviously cause trouble and will end up before the Board. It is not right that we should intrude. Let me give another example. I would always resist, and have resisted, efforts of Government to introduce into the affairs of matrimony as between husband and wife in their own home. We do not seek to probe that conduct at all unless it offends certain matrimonial laws, because it is the privacy between husband and wife.
  Likewise, here, there is a conflict of principle. I quite accept that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Walton comes down, from the practical experience of which he has spoken, and which I entirely accept from him, on the side of preferring a Measure which outlaws discrimination rather than one which does not involve the invasion of one's own private home. I point out, and I am sure that he will be tolerant enough to accept this, that many of us take precisely the opposite view where that conflict arises. Amendment No. 27 goes to the root of the matter, and is the only way of doing what we want.
  In the place of this Amendment, it is sought to put Government Amendment No. 33. It is no answer to earlier debates on Clause 2 to say that inserting the words "small premises" and seeking to add permission to have six persons in addition to the landlord and his family will answer the problem of the small paying-guest accommodation.
  The House will remember that earlier the Under-Secretary pointed out that we had to come to Clause 7 to answer the position of the small boarding-house keeper, but this Clause does not answer it. It is no answer for the small boarding-house keeper to be told that with his family he can have up to six guests only in the establishment and if it is

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  not more than six he will not be guilty of discrimination provided those six share the accommodation in that establishment. If the law is passed in this form, it will mean that Mr. and Mrs. Bloggs can have up to six people in their accommodation provided it is shared, which means the kitchen, bathroom and other facilities are all shared, and they can be exempt. But if there are seven, eight, nine or 10 guests in the modem type of accommodation, such as flatlets, even if there are thin partitions through which people can be heard, they will be caught. I find that wholly inadequate.
  There is an Amendment in the names of my hon. Friends which seeks to make the number 12. That would have been infinitely more reasonable although I do not think it would have gone far enough. If the Government had made some effort to meet this position we would have been happier. They have not done so and I do not think they have faced the dichotomy of these two principles which are at loggerheads. Time will show that we shall have to amend this Measure in order to put this right. This will be so because in the years ahead personal freedom will become the dominant principle.
  Sir D. Renton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You have said that Amendment No. 33, which provides a new Government subsection to Clause 7, shall be discussed with Amendment No. 25. On the Notice Paper my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Mary-lebone, other hon. Friends and I have put down two Amendments to Amendment No. 33. We attach great importance to those two Amendments. I hope that we may have your permission to have a Division, at any rate on the first of them, in order that our views may be expressed.
  Mr. Speaker: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Member. I think that to ask for two Divisions would be unreasonable, but I am prepared to grant a Division on the first Amendment to Amendment No. 33.
  Sir D. Renton: I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker.
  In Clause 7 we are dealing with one of the most difficult parts of the Bill. We are dealing with human relations at their most intimate and most sensitive stage—
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  people living cheek by jowl under the same roof in what is normally a private house. In those circumstances, one would generally say that the right to privacy should prevail and there should be no interference with it whatever. That is another way of saying, as my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) said, that an Englishman's home is his castle. [An HON. MEMBER: "He was wrong."]
  We should be very careful indeed before we depart from that principle. The Government have said that some houses are so large and contain so many people, and the accommodation may be so separated, that we should legislate in such a way that the letting of that accommodation should not be the subject of discrimination. The Government themselves have accepted up to a point the principle of privacy, but they then say that we must draw the line. These are complicated Amendments. The Parliamentary Secretary did his best to explain their effect. I understand the position is that in order to gain exemption from the general discrimination part of the Bill, the accommodation in the circumstances we have in mind must clearly be for not more than six people and the landlord, the landlord must reside there and intend to continue to reside there, and there must be shared accommodation, which is defined as accommodation other than storage accommodation and means of access.
  9.45 p.m.
  Bearing in mind our discussions in Committee, which were on somewhat the same lines as the discussions we have had tonight, although I think that some important new points have been brought out tonight, I find the Government's attitude disappointing. They still have too stringent an attitude towards what will happen under the roof of a private house. I do not think that the Government Amendments adequately meet the realities of the small divided dwelling, because that is what we are dealing with, especially in crowded conditions.
  Further, as my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) pointed out, no provision is made as to a part of a private house which is let as a self-contained flat—that is, without there being any shared accommodation. In any event, quite apart from the points

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  raised by our Amendments, that is a point which should engage the Parliamentary Secretary's attention as something to be dealt with later.
  I come to our Amendments to Amendment No. 33. Amendment No. 33 would provide that, apart from the landlord and his household, there must be no more than six people in order that there shall be exemption; but it says—this is in the new subsection (3)—that in the first two years it will be all right if there are 12 people. We say that that is unrealistic and too restrictive. The combined effect of our two Amendments to Amendment 33 would be that the exemption should apply if there are no more than 12 people plus the landlord and his household.
  If that is right, it would be right for a good many years to come. I do not say for all time, because, as was pointed out so rightly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes), there can be no finality about legislation of this kind. We must feel our way. However, all the indications are that the Bill will be in operation for from three to five years. The next Government—we have a pretty good idea of which party they will be composed—will have to take a careful look at it, and especially at Clause 7. We believe that for the few years for which the Bill will run it would be right to plump for a limit of 12 people as forming the right dividing line between the circumstances where complete privacy should be allowed to prevail and the circumstances in which there may be scope for preventing discrimination.
  I do not want to repeat the points made so forcefully by my hon. Friends. A very strong case has been made for further thoughts to be taken on this very delicate matter. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary himself would not wish to invade the right of privacy in a man's own home any more than is absolutely necessary to prevent discrimination in circumstances where it would be reasonable to do so.
  Mr. MacColl: This is, as right hon. and hon. Members on both sides have said, a very difficult problem. It is a question of striking a careful balance between the rights of the owner of the
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  house and those of the unfortunate person who is trying to find somewhere to live. I fully accept that. I fully understand the difficulties. I thought that it was all the more unfair of hon. Members opposite to chide us with having done nothing to meet any of the points that they had raised.
  Mr. Grieve: We did nothing of the kind. My hon. Friends the Members for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) and the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) and others and I chided the Joint Parliamentary Secretary with not meeting the specific question of the house sub-divided into independent units.
  Mr. MacColl: I wish to deal with the other point raised by the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet, the question of the number of people, the number of lodgers, to be written into the Bill. In Committee, hon. Members suggested 20, but, as the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) said, there was general agreement that that was too high. In their Amendment to Clause 2, hon. Members suggested 10. We suggest that for two years it should be 12 and that after two years, after the test period or phasing for which the right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) asked, it should come down to six. All the response we have to that is that we ought to make it 12 for all time. Right hon. and hon. Members may not think that we have gone far enough in this difficult matter, but to say that we have not looked carefully and anxiously at the question is to be less than fair.
  I agree with what the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) said in his last speech in the House. He said that there was a problem here, that one was not entitled to interfere with conduct because one thought it morally reprehensible unless there were important social consequences arising from the conduct in question. I entirely share that view. It is a good starting point. Where I part company from the right hon. and learned Gentleman is in my assessment of the social consequences. In housing more than in any other field in which racial prejudice can operate, the social consequences, the consequences to the public apart from the parties directly concerned, can be disastrous because, unless people can have a

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  wide choice of homes, they cannot avoid the sort of concentration in certain parts of towns which becomes known as the ghetto.
  When the Government are scolded, as they often are, for not doing enough to deal with overcrowding caused in certain areas by immigration—this is the problem, the problem of concentration, not a wide spread over the country—one can only reply that it is possible to do little unless in addition to the public sector housing available there is also a wide choice of private accommodation. As one of my hon. Friends said, it must be accommodation which is cheap, accommodation of the kind which ordinary people want to use, not merely large houses. That is the reason why we consider that we have drawn the right line.
  I should draw attention to one point about the self-contained flat which has not been mentioned. Under the Clause as we propose to amend it, if there are, say, three storeys to the house, the bottom one being in the occupation of the owner and the next sharing accommodation with it, the top storey can be self-contained. It is not necessary to have sharing of accommodation with each of the other two households. To some extent, therefore, that goes in the direction of meeting the point made by the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle).
  Dr. Miller: Surely, my hon. Friend is aware of the situation in places like Glasgow in the tenement blocks which may be three, four, or sometimes 10 or 12 storeys high. There is separate close accommodation for people, but there are all kinds of common parts, a common entrance and common facilities. There is really no difference between that kind of proximity and the kind of proximity about which hon. Members opposite are worried.
  Mr. McColl: The difficulty here is to decide where to draw the line. I am dealing with the point raised by the hon. Member for Runcorn, whose views everyone respects. The great snag in this proposal which he saw was the one raised by the self-contained flat. When we come to draw the line, the self-contained flat with its separate door which can be locked is a reasonable test of whether or not the man's home is being shared or a separate home is created with which he
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  is dealing as a separate unit of accommodation. If we went so far as to include vertical self-contained accommodation, we should have the difficult question of what we do about self-contained accommodation going laterally. There is the problem of the next door house, of the two semi-detached houses, when the man who buys them lets one and not the other, as so often happens. One would soon get into great difficulties about the kind of test to be applied.
  I recognise that this is a difficult problem which the Street Committee found baffling. It did not come to a conclusion on it, but set out clearly the choice which should be made and took as the test the question of intimate personal proximity. It said that if the owner of a block of 50 flats chooses to live in one he is quite clearly not living in his own home with the others. Similarly, if there are three self-contained flats with three different tenants, the Committee did not think that that should be regarded as the letting of a home. It is a commercial transaction. It then considered the case where there are other tenants in the accommodation sharing the facilities, and thought that this was the strongest. Interestingly enough, it used the widow, whose shadow has been the background of all our proceedings, to show that her main needs would be met not by converting to self-contained accommodation but by dealing with the sharing point.
  Therefore, the Clause in its new form is the result of very careful, painful and conscientious examination of the problem to try to find the right balance between a number of possibilities, all of which are attractive in one way or another. My advice to the House is that it should accept the Clause in its new form.
  Mr. Hogg: I must begin by apologising for not having been present throughout this important discussion. Obviously, in a prolonged debate such as this, one must delegate one's rests when one is away. I apologise to the hon. Members who have taken part, including my hon. Friends, for not having been present throughout.
  Everyone would agree that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has proceeded in a peaceable and wholly acceptable manner. I hope to do the same, although I think that the question will inevitably proceed to a Division. I hope that it

  347
  will be a Division without any ill-will, as the last one can be said to have been.
  There are points of agreement, at any rate between the two Front Benches, and it is as well to emphasise them and the points of difference here. Both sides are agreed that in the intimate field of housing, both for reasons of convenience, which are important, and for reasons of principle, there must be an exemption limit of some kind. We think—we have divided upon this, and, therefore, I do not need to elaborate the difference—that there should be separate treatment for temporary accommodation and accommodation which is sought as a permanent home. I do not want to embark upon this again.
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Ordered,
  That the Proceedings on the Race Relations Bill may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
  Question again proposed, That the Amendment be made.
  Mr. Hogg: The Government on the whole have sought to place their exemption limit common to both temporary accommodation and permanent accommodation, and we have sought to make a separate exemption limit for temporary and permanent accommodation. We are now dealing with permanent accommodation, recognising that the Government have ha$ their way in embracing temporary accommodation with it.
  The first question is that of sharing. Should that be an essential factor in declaring what is meant by "small accommodation"? We think "no"; I understand that the Government think "yes". This is not a fundamental difference between the two sides of the House, although it is a difference on which we may have to choose by voting.
  The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), to whose views I always listen with respect, spoke of his own experience and tended to think that the Government were right. I can speak only of my experience. I have had only the shortest period of my life in shared accommodation, but in the course of my professional life I have had considerable
  348
  experience of the bitterness and misery caused by people who do not get on in multiple units whether the accommodation of the kitchen and so on is shared or not.
  I do not find the criterion of shared accommodation decisive. It is, of course, extremely important. Whether a kitchen, a toilet or a bathroom is shared is perhaps one of the most important factors in the situation, and I do not want to underestimate it, but noise and deliberately engineered nuisance occur whether the accommodation is shared or not. In my early days at the Bar in the Shoreditch and Clerkenwell County Courts the number of miserable, bitter, prolonged, expensive and unrewarding disputes that I heard being fought out to nobody's advantage which depended simply on noise or mutual persecution were almost unnumbered. I admit that shared accommodation is important, but I do not find it decisive.
  Mr. Heffer: Would not the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that most of those cases, which I entirely accept exist, had nothing to do with colour, racial or ethnic problems? It was merely that individuals did not get on with each other.
  Mr. Hogg: I agree absolutely with the hon. Gentleman. In those days—I am speaking of many years ago—the question of race hardly arose. This is a novel problem, but I think we are entitled to bring our personal experiences to bear on the problem of race as it has emerged in the last 12 or perhaps 20 years. The reasons why people do not get on are innumerable. It may be religion, it may be race, it may be family or it may be personal. They are irrational in their inception, but they are none the less miserable in their results.
  The question we are trying to concentrate on is the point at which we draw the line, there being two incompatible principles, as my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) said, to bring to bear in the situation. There is the right of the individual to do what other people think wrong and there are the social consequences which proceed from the fact that a great number of people act in the same way. The question is not one of a vast gulf between the two sides of the

  349
  House. That would be a wrong way of presenting the problem. The Government have yielded to the Opposition on an important and significant but not fundamental point. The Bill as unamended said "four". The Government have said "twelve for two years and six thereafter." This is a concession and it would be churlish of me to under-estimate that they have argued this matter out with us and have come to a conclusion based on the desire to be reasonable.
  The point at which we are at issue is not a vast question of principle but it may be one of considerable practical importance. The Government have moved from four to 12 for two years and thereafter to six and we say that there should be 12 but without a tapering period. That is the question we are debating. It is a narrow question but one which affects the fortunes of many thousands and, therefore, I am entitled to spend time upon it. It is not a question which shakes society to its foundations. If we divide upon it, I hope that we shall do so without bad temper.
  The reasons which have led me to take the higher rather than the lower limit are twofold. The first is the question of workability, of the practical efficiency of the Bill. It is true that a large number of people live in units of accommodation which come within the higher exemption limit which I would seek to impose, bat on the other hand the amount of reward one gets for investigating any particular complaint which affects the range between six and 12 is very small.
  I want the Race Relations Board to do significant and important work. I do not want it to get bogged down on a great number of small and individually unremunerative cases, each of which takes just as much time and trouble to investigate as one of the larger cases. That is a reasonable and practical ground of convenience.
  Secondly, I appeal to the principle of justice. The managers of small units of accommodation have to face different management problems from those of the larger units. I have pointed this out before and I do not want to weary the House with it, but the question of scale ultimately develops into a question of principle. If one employs five men, one cannot make switches or make individual arrangements of the sort one can make
  350
  if one employs a large number of people. It is a question of judgment as to where to draw the line and I would prefer the higher to the lower limit.
  Lastly, we come to the question of tapering. There are those who have used the question of tapering in seeking to show that we on this side, by avoiding the tapering provisions, want to enshrine our limit in permanent form for ever. That is not so. I have said this before but it is important to repeat it. We are embarking upon a novel and in some ways perilous kind of legislation, as our current discussions have shown. I do not pretend that the limit which we have proposed is a matter of eternal verity at all.
  In the nature of things—and I say this without attempting to make a party point —this Parliament is ultimately coming to an end at some time. The tapering limits which have been proposed by the Government in both this and the employment provisions probably overstretch the bounds of this Parliament, and another Government, conceivably of the same, but probably of a different complexion, will take their place. Are we to legislate for that Parliament or that Government, or to legislate as far as we can see? We on this side of the House think that we should legislate as far as we can see, and that is not particularly far in this context. A new Government—and a new Parliament will legislate in the light of the experience of what the limits should be. We think that 12 and not six is the right limit. We think that we should not limit the legislation to shared accommodation and we think that temporary accommodation should be separately treated.
  In those circumstances, despite the very courteous, careful and conscientious speech of the Parliamentary Secretary, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to divide the House as I have indicated.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendments made: No. 26, in page 3, line 40, leave out 'resides' and insert:
  '(in this subsection and subsection (2) below referred to as "the landlord") resides and intends to continue to reside'.
  No. 29, in line 41, leave out paragraph (b).
  No. 31, in page 4, line 9, leave out from 'by' to 'shared' in line 10 and insert 'the landlord, relevant accommodation'.—[Mr. MacColl.]
  Amendment proposed: No. 33, in page 4, line 12, at end insert:
  '(2) Premises shall be treated for the purposes of subsection (1) above as small premises if—
  (a) in the case of premises comprising residential accommodation for one or more households (under separate letting or similar agreements) in addition to the accommodation occupied by the landlord, there is not normally residential accommodation for more than two such households and only the landlord and any member of his household reside in the accommodation occupied by him;
  (b) in the case of premises not falling within paragraph (a) above, there is not normally residential accommodation on the premises for more than six persons in addition to the landlord and any members of his household.
  (3) During the two years beginning with the commencement of this Act, subsection (2)(b) above shall have effect as if for the reference to six persons there were substituted a reference to twelve persons'.—[Mr. MacColl.]
  Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, in paragraph (b) leave out 'six' and insert 'twelve'.—[Mr. Hogg.]
  Question put, That the Amendment to the proposed Amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 149, Noes 234.

  Division No. 272.]

  AYES

  [10.14 p.m.

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Grant-Ferris, R.

  Onslow, Cranley

  Astor, John

  Gresham Cooke, R.

  Osborn, John (Hallam)

  Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n & M'd'n)

  Grieve, Percy

  Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)

  Awdry, Daniel

  Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

  Page, Graham (Crosby)

  Baker, Kenneth (Acton)

  Gurden, Harold

  Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

  Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Peel, John

  Bell, Ronald

  Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

  Percival, Ian

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

  Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)

  Pounder, Rafton

  Biff en, John

  Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Pym, Francis

  Black, Sir Cyril

  Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel

  Quennell, Miss J. M.

  Blaker, Peter

  Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

  Higgins, Terence L.

  Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

  Body, Richard

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Bossom, Sir Clive

  Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Brewis, John

  Holland, Philip

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)

  Bryan, Paul

  Hutchison, Michael Clark

  Royle, Anthony

  Buck, Antony (Colchester)

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Russetl, Sir Ronald

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Burden, F. A.

  Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)

  Sharpies, Richard

  Campbell, B. (Oldham, W.)

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Silvester, Frederick

  Campbell, Gordon (Moray & Nairn)

  Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)

  Smith, Dudley (W'wick & L'mington)

  Carlisle, Mark

  Kaberry, Sir Donald

  Smith, John (London & W'minster)

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Kerby, Capt. Henry

  Speed, Keith

  Cooke, Robert

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Stainton, Keith

  Cordle, John

  Kirk, Peter

  Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Rlpon)

  Corfield, F. V.

  Kitson, Timothy

  Summers, Sir Spencer

  Costain, A. P.

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Tapsell, Peter

  Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Lane, David

  Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow,Cathcart)

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

  Crouch, David

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.

  Cunningham, Sir Knox

  Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)

  van Straubenzee, W. R.

  Currie, G. B. H.

  McAdden, Sir Stephen

  Vickers, Dame Joan

  Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)

  Maclean, Sir Fitzroy

  Walker, Peter (Worcester)

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

  Maddan, Martin

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Maginnis, John E.

  Ward, Dame Irene

  Dodds-Parker, Douglas

  Marten, Neil

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Doughty, Charles

  Maude, Angus

  Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

  Drayson, G. B.

  Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

  Williams, Donald (Dudley)

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshahon)

  Monro, Hector

  Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)

  Elliott,R.W.(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,N.)

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Errington, Sir Eric

  More, Jasper

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

  Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

  Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Fortescue, Tim

  Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Galbraith, Hn. T. G.

  Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

  Worsley, Marcus

  Gibson-Watt, David

  Murton, Oscar

  Younger, Hn. George

  Glover, Sir Douglas

  Nabarro, Sir Gerald

  Goodhart, Philip

  Neave, Airey

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Gower, Raymond

  Nicholls, Sir Harmar

  Mr. Reginald Eyre and

  Grant, Anthony

  Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

  Mr. Bernard Weatherill

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Forrester, John

  Millar, Dr. M. S.

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Fraser, John (Norwood)

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Alldritt, Walter

  Freeson, Reginald

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

  Anderson, Donald

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Molloy, William

  Archer, Peter

  Ginsburg, David

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

  Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Morris, John (Aberavon)

  Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

  Gregory, Arnold

  Moyle, Roland

  Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

  Grey, Charles (Durham)

  Murray, Albert

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

  Neal, Harold

  Barnes, Michael

  Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)

  Newens, Stan

  Barnett, Joel

  Griffiths, Rt. Hn, James (Llanelly)

  Ogden, Eric

  Baxter, William

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  O'Malley, Brian

  Beaney, Alan

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Orbach, Maurice

  Bence, Cyril

  Hamling, William

  Orme, Stanley

  Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)

  Hannan, William

  Oswald, Thomas

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Owen, Will (Morpeth)

  Blackburn, F.

  Haseldine, Norman

  Paget, R. T.

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Hattersley, Roy

  Palmer, Arthur

  Boardman, H. (Le'gh)

  Hazell, Bert

  Pannell, nt. Hn. Charles

  Booth, Albert

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

  Boston, Terence

  Henig, Stanley

  Pavitt, Laurence

  Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

  Hilton, W. S.

  Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)

  Boyden, James

  Hooley, Frank

  Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

  Horner, John

  Pentland, Norman

  Bray, Dr. Jeremy

  Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)

  Brown, Rt. Hn. George (Belper)

  Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)

  Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)

  Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

  Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

  Rankin, John

  Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch & F'bury)

  Howie, W.

  Rhodes, Geoffrey

  Buchan, Norman

  Hoy, James

  Richard, Ivor

  Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

  Huckfield, Leslie

  Roberts, Albert (Normanton)

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

  Robertson, John (Paisley)

  Cant, R. B.

  Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

  Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)

  Carmichael, Neil

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E)

  Chapman, Donald

  Hunter, Adam

  Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

  Coe, Denis

  Hynd, John

  Rose, Paul

  Coleman, Donald

  Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &Spenb'gh)

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William

  Concannon, J. D.

  Janner, Sir Barnett

  Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)

  Conlan, Bernard

  Jeger, Mrs.Lena(H'b'n& St.P'cras,S.)

  Sheldon, Robert

  Corbet, Mrs. Freda

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Cronin, John

  Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)

  Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)

  Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

  Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton,N.E.)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Jones, Rt. Hn.Sir Elwyn(W.Ham,S.)

  Silverman, Julius

  Darling, Rt. Hn. George

  Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)

  Skeffington, Arthur

  Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)

  Judd, Frank

  Slater, Joseph

  Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire,W.)

  Kelley, Richard

  Small, William

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stratford)

  Lawson, George

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

  Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John

  Davies, S. 0. (Merthyr)

  Lee, John (Reading)

  Summersklll, Hn Dr. Shirley

  Dell, Edmund

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Swain, Thomas

  Dempsey, James

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Taverne, Dick

  Dewar Donald

  Lomas, Kenneth

  Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

  Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

  Luard, Evan

  Urwin, T. W.

  Dickens, James

  Lubbock, Eric

  Varley, Eric G.

  Dobson, Ray

  Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

  Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)

  Doig, Peter

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Wainwright, Richard (Colne Valley)

  Dunn, James A.

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Walden, Brian (All Saints)

  Dunnett, Jack

  McCann, John

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

  MacColl, James

  Watkins, David (Consett)

  Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e)

  Macdonald, A. H.

  Weitzman, David

  Eadie, Alex

  McGuire, Michael

  Wellbeloved, James

  Edelman, Maurice

  McKay, Mrs. Margaret

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross& Crom'ty)

  Whitaker, Ben

  Ellis, John

  Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

  White, Mrs. Eirene

  Ennala, David

  Mackintosh, John p.

  Whitlock, William

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  Maclennan, Robert

  Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Evans, Gwynfor (C'marthen)

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

  Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

  Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)

  Fernyhough, E.

  Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Fitch, Alan (Wigan)

  Mallalieu, J. P. W.(Huddersfield,E.)

  Winnlck, David

  Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

  Manuel, Archie

  Winstanley, Dr. M. P.

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Marks, Kenneth

  Yates, Victor

  Foot, Rt. Hn. Sir Dingle (Ipswich)

  Mendelson, J. J.

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  Mikardo, Ian

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Ford, Ben

  Millan, Bruce

  Mr. Joseph Harper and

  Mr. Neil McBride.

  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendments made: No. 34, in page 4, line 13, leave out 'subsection (1)' and insert:
  the foregoing provisions of this section'.
  No. 35, in line 14, after 'accommodation', insert 'or to the landlord'.
  No. 36, in line 28, leave out 'subsection (1) above' and insert:
  'the foregoing provisions of this section'.
  No. 37, in line 30, at end insert:
  'and "relevant accommodation" means any accommodation other than storage accommodation and means of access'.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
  Mr. Speaker: We now come to Amendment No. 38, in page 4, line 32, at end insert 'cabin', with which I suggest that we take also the following Amendments:
  No. 39, in line 33, leave out 'accommodation' and insert 'cabins'.
  No. 40, in line 33, after 'accommodation', insert:
  'in a hotel, boarding house, or other similar establishment or'.
  No. 42, in line 36, leave out 'such accommodation' and insert 'any such cabin'.
  Amendment No. 44, in line 36, after 'such', insert 'residential'.
  Mr. Rose: As Amendment No. 39 by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary entirely meets the point of my Amendment No. 38, I do not propose to move it. I thank my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for meeting the wishes of the Committee in this matter in distinguishing between cabin accommodation, on the one hand, with its necessary close proximity and intimacy and, on the other hand, the general accommodation in ships. For that reason, I do not wish to proceed with my Amendment.
  Amendment made: No. 39, in page 4, line 33, leave out 'accommodation' and insert 'cabins'.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
  Mr. Rose: I beg to move Amendment No. 41, in page 4, line 33, after 'ship', insert:
  'on the specific request of an intending passenger'.
  The addition of the words which I propose would prevent the occurrence of a situation which was referred to in Committee whereby a shipping company or the employees of a shipping company attempted to operate a policy of segregation or apartheid. As I said then, I recognise that with the provision of cabin accommodation one cannot force people to share accommodation which puts them in close proximity for the period of a long voyage. I cited the problem which might arise if, for example, a Turkish and a Greek Cypriot were asked to share the same cabin. The same situation might well arise, after the proceedings on this stage of the Bill, if I were asked to share
  358
  a cabin with the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies).
  What I cannot accept is that, without a specific request from a prospective voyager on a shipping line, the shipping line should nevertheless allocate accommodation on a racial basis, because it would be open to the shipping line to use the legitimate exemption which is provided for in the Clause to give legal sanction to a policy of segregation in the allocation of accommodation.
  Even on this side of the House, we have to concede to prejudice where to ignore it would create a worse situation. We should not, however, pander to the possibility of prejudice which has not already been expressed or shown. That would be the sure way to stimulate that kind of prejudice. It therefore seems to me that, where there has not been a specific request, the wording should be so framed as to prevent the possibility of places on a ship being allocated on a racial basis.
  For that reason I commend the Amendment to the House, because the Clause, as it now stands, cuts down the scope not only of the Bill as it stood before Committee stage, but also of the Race Relations Act, 1965, which applied to places of public resort. Essentially, if one is not to undermine the basis of the Bill and of the 1965 Act, we have to be careful in circumscribing the exceptions that the law permits to the general provisions with regard to discrimination. I believe the Amendment does precisely that, and for this reason I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will be as helpful in meeting this point as he has undoubtedly been in meeting the earlier Amendment with regard to cabin accommodation as distinct from general accommodation on board ship.
  10.30 p.m.
  Mr. Callaghan: It seems a little churlish after what my hon. Friend said about my meeting him on the previous Amendment not to be able to do so in relation to the cabins now, but I regret that I cannot.
  I have discussed this matter with the Board of Trade. As my hon. Friend knows, the shipping companies do not

  359
  operate discrimination in these matters. They have no intention of doing so. It would be foreign not only to their policy but to their interests to do so, because they run ships that cater for people of all colours. The main objection that they have, and which I ask the House to accept, to a provision on these lines is that it puts them in a very difficult position without altering the policy that they endeavour to follow. They make certain assumptions, they operate on the basis of very long experience, and on the whole the system works out very well at present. If it did not work well, then we would have to look at it again, but I know of no discrimination of this sort at the present time, and therefore I would ask my hon. Friend not to press the Amendment.

  5

  (5) It shall not be unlawful by virtue of section 5 above for any person to discriminate against another with respect to the disposal by the former of his interest in any premises owned and wholly occupied by him unless he uses the services of an estate agent in connection with the disposal, or publishes or displays, or causes the publication or display, of an advertisement or notice in connection therewith.

  10

  (6) For the purposes of subsection (5) above a person shall be taken to own premises if the fee simple or a lease of the premises is vested in him, and in that subsection 'estate agent' means a person who in connection with the disposal of an interest in land does any of the following acts in the course of a trade, business or profession, that is to say, he brings together or takes steps to bring together the person proposing to dispose of the interest and the prospective purchaser thereof, or acts as an auctioneer.

  In the application of this subsection to Scotland 'fee simple' means the estate or interest of the proprietor of the dominium utile.

  Mr. Speaker: With this Amendment we can discuss the Amendments to the Amendment, in line 2, leave out from 'of' to 'by' in line 3 and insert:
  an interest in any premises owned'
  in line 2, after 'in', insert 'or the letting of' and in line 3, leave out from 'him' to end of line 5.
  Mr. Callaghan: This is an Amendment of substance that I should say a word about. It arose out of a discussion in Committee, and the Amendment, which will form the new subsections (5) and (6) of Clause 7, sets out circumstances in which it is not unlawful to discriminate, which is perhaps an odd way of putting the proposition. To put it positively, the Amendment means that a private householder who seeks to dispose of his house privately without advertisement shall not be regarded as being in breach of the Bill if he discriminates. I do not know the circumstances in which this is likely to arise, but the position which the Committee had in mind, and which I am meeting by the Amendment,
  Mr. Rose: Although I cannot say that I am entirely satisfied with the reply of my right hon. Friend, and it was not my intention to allege that any particular shipping company would necessarily want to discriminate—I was basing this upon the interpretation that might be given to the wording—since my right hon. Friend has been so forthcoming in the other matter, perhaps I may meet him half-way and beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Amendment made: No. 42, in page 4, line 36, leave out 'such accommodation and insert' any such cabin'.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
  Mr. Callaghan: I beg to move, Amendment No. 45, in page 4, line 36, at end insert:
  is that of a man who wishes to dispose of his house to a son or a daughter, or to an even more distant relative or to a close friend. He does not advertise it in any way. It is a private transaction and, as such, it is right that no third party should intervene in it. It is for that reason that I am proposing to except these genuinely private sales by an owner-occupier.
  If, however, he uses an agent to dispose of his property or if he publicises the matter or displays an advertisement for the sale of his property, then it ceases to be an entirely private transaction, and in that case it would be subject to the Measure and the normal provisions would apply.
  I have heard it said many times that this requires a private house owner to sell his house to a coloured man. Of course it does not mean anything of the sort. In the case I am now discussing, of a private transaction, he can do exactly as he pleases. But if he advertises or uses an agent, he may not refuse to sell

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  his house on grounds of colour, race or whatever the ethnic provisions contained in the discrimination provisions. That is the difference. It is an important difference. This concession to the views expressed in Committee will apply to owner-occupied property and, for this purpose, owner-occupied property includes leasehold property.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: It would be nice at this hour to be able to welcome this as a major concession, but transparently it is not. This concession is likely to be very limited in its practical scope. The right hon. Gentleman said that people may do what they please in their private transactions of selling houses. But how many people buy or sell their houses as a purely personal and private transaction, without any intervention or assistance, save possibly that of solicitors for conveyancing?
  Mr. Robert Howarth: Speak for yourself.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: The hon. Gentleman may or may not be conversant with these matters. I do not recall having seen him often before. I do not know for how long he has been an hon. Member or what experience he has of these matters.
  Mr. Robert Howarth: The right hon. and learned Gentleman may be interested to learn that only six months ago I disposed privately of the house which I then owned. This is not uncommon in parts of the world where, I admit, we do not own rather grand houses.
  Mr. Callaghan: Some months ago I disposed privately of a very grand house.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: The Home Secretary is very fortunate. According to what I read in the newspapers, the right hon. Gentleman has had four houses to dispose of or acquire in one way or another. We do not know whether or not he made a good bargain. Nor do we know whether the hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Robert Howarth) made a good bargain. It might help if I tell the hon. Gentleman my qualifications, such as they are, in these matters. I have practised in the law for a great many years, and in a side of the law which has brought me a little into contact with these issues. So my experience extends a little beyond the six months for which he takes such credit.
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  Despite those two interventions, I repeat that I do not believe that it is very normal for people to buy or sell houses as a purely personal, private and unaided transaction. Apart from his personal experience, to which the Home Secretary evidently attaches so much importance—[Interruption.]—he would not have mentioned it if he did not attach importance to it.
  Mr. Orme: Stop talking nonsense. Get on with it.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: The hon. Member is very fond of making sedentary interruptions.
  Mr. Orme: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman would only get back to the Bill and what we are discussing, instead of reminiscing, we might be able to get on.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: I thought when I gave way to the hon. Member when he made an intervention from a seated position—[Interruption.]—is the hon. Member criticising me for having given way to him and his hon. Friends?
  I submit—as I did before those three interruptions to which, I hope courteously, I gave way—that in my experience and in the general experience it is not very usual to buy or sell houses as purely private and personal transactions unaided by any advice or assistance. [Interruption.] Hon. Members say, on what evidence? Has any inquiry been made?
  Mr. Callaghan: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making very heavy weather of this, but he knows that he is wrong. This Amendment was pursued and was pressed on me by his own side in Committee.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: If the right hon. Gentleman would amend it in the form suggested by my hon. Friends, to exempt private transactions without the limitations which the right hon. Gentleman puts on it, I would willingly concede that it was a concession of substance which we should receive with appreciation.
  Mr. Callaghan: The right hon. and learned Gentleman was not on the Committee. The point put to me was about the owner-occupier. He should know when he is on a weak point.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: If the right hon. Gentleman will extend his Amendment, as he is asked to do by the Amendment in the names of my hon. Friends, to all sales by owner-occupiers without the limitation that they should not use an estate agent, and should not advertise them, I am sure that we would all accept his Amendment as a substantial concession and one which we ought to welcome. Will he do that? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If he does not do that, I repeat that this is not an Amendment of substance and not one which should be welcomed.
  Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will answer this. What is the position where a surveyor is employed to give a report on the condition and physical state of the house for both parties? What is the position where a surveyor is brought in to make a valuation for the joint information of both parties? He is clearly bringing the parties together by rendering his services in that way, but under the Amendment that will exclude those parties from the concessions the right hon. Gentleman is making.
  How is it suggested that the vendor of a house can fix the price without testing the market; if he is to make a private sale, if he is not allowed to consult an estate agent, if he is not allowed to insert an advertisement and not even allowed to erect a notice. [An HON. MEMBER: "He is."] If he does, he does not get the benefit of the concession which the right hon. Gentleman is making. How can he test the market without doing one or other of those things? Any prudent person when selling a house, even if he is to sell it by private transaction, will test the market in one or other of those ways. Very few people indeed will enter into the transaction without doing one or other of those things. That being so, this concession as it is framed is illusory and a mere piece of window dressing. Far from being worthy of being welcomed by the House, it is evidence of the very limited degree of concession which the Home Secretary is willing to make in the passage of the Bill.
  10.45 p.m.
  Mr. Whitaker: I am unhappy about this concession, but for precisely opposite reasons to those of the right hon. and learned Member the Mem-
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  ber for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith). I believe I am right in saying that only last month the Supreme Court of the United States of America declared that discrimination in any private sale in housing is illegal, which is something which we are seeking not to do in the Bill.
  It has rightly and often been said that our circumstances in Britain are not exactly parallel to those in the United States. The chief difference is that the racial problem in the United States is of far greater magnitude than it is in this country. Therefore, racial legislation should certainly not be any less strong in this country than it is in America. I do not wish to prolong this point, but this is one of a number of concessions which have been made to weaken the Bill. In general, I cannot help feeling that any pandering to prejudice does not diminish that prejudice. It increases it. I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend, who has made a number of concessions to weaken the Bill, will, with impartiality, make some more concessions—to those on this side who wish the Bill to be strengthened.
  Mr. Costain: I am in full agreement with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith). His experience in housing is very great. I hope that the Home Secretary is not going to claim that I have no experience of houses and house sales.
  Mr. Callaghan: What I would claim is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who I respect for his knowledge, displays a lamentable ignorance of the way in which most people in Britain know the state of the market and the value of their own houses without having to go near an estate agent and are quite capable of forming their own view as to what the value of their house is.
  Mr. Costain: The Home Secretary talks utter poppycock. He may, from what we read in the Press, be an expert at selling four houses, but I doubt if anybody, with present house values, has the ability properly to assess the value of his house without testing the market. The Amendment is not a concession. It represents mixed thinking. It is said that

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  somebody can sell a house privately, provided that he does not use the services of an estate agent, but the Bill makes no reference to what is an estate agent.
  My right hon. and learned Friend referred to a surveyor or valuer being brought in to assess the property. Is he an estate agent, or is he not? Most valuers are in some capacity connected with the estate agency business. If someone calls in a partner in an estate agency who happens to be the valuer in that agency, does he contravene this provision?
  Has not the Home Secretary forgotten what this is all about? Someone who is about to sell his house probably is not very concerned about who he sells it to. The people who will be concerned about that are the neighbours of the vendor. The result of this so-called concession will be a black market in houses. So many Socialist controls end up in black markets. There will be a black market in houses because the next-door neighbour will want to acquire the house so as to have some control over who his neighbours are. He is the person who will be affected. When anybody wants to sell a house, provided that he can persuade his next door neighbour to buy it from him without the services of an estate agent, this will be the easiest way to do it, because the vendor and his next door neighbour can talk over the fence. The neighbour will buy the house and it will be his job to select the person who is to live next door to him. This concession is unworkable. It is not really a concession at all. It would lead to a black market in housing, a situation which this House should not bring about.
  The right thing to do is to accept the Amendments to the Amendment and so make it possible for people—owner-occupiers—to have freedom to sell their own properties. Does the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. John Lee) want to intervene?
  Mr. John Lee: Yes. I want the hon. Member to make it clear to the House whether he wants to limit the scope of discrimination or extend it? This is what the Bill is about. It is not at all clear from what he has said where he stands on this. We want to know.
  Mr. Costain: I made my position perfectly clear when we had a debate earlier this evening whether an Englishman's home should be his castle. There is here reference specially to a person's own home. That is a special situation. A person should be free to deal with it as he wishes. That is my view on this.
  I suggest that this Amendment is not really a concession at all unless we accept the Amendments to it, and I hope the House will accept them.
  Mr. Ian Mikardo: My right hon. Friend moved this Amendment in response to requests from hon. Gentlemen opposite, and now they say they do not like it. What we want to know is, are they going to divide the House against it? Because, if so, they may find some support from this side of the House; and, indeed, we could vote the Amendment down. I ask the hon. Gentleman the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Costain), did he mean what he said? Because if he did, if he does not like the Amendment, he is going to divide the House and vote against the Amendment. All right. I would make two suggestions. One to my right hon. Friend: since the gift which he has offered to hon. Gentlemen opposite has been so brusquely rejected, he ought to withdraw the Amendment. I see that my right hon. Friend is tempted. I think he would satisfy all quarters of the House if, for once, he went along with his old schoolmate and withdrew this Amendment. But if he does not, then those hon. Gentlemen opposite who have spoken against this Amendment will be manifestly guilty of the most arrant hypocrisy if they do not divide the House against it, and if they do, I think I can almost assure them we can vote it down.
  Mr. Julian Ridsdale: Not being a lawyer, and not having sat on the Committee on the Bill, I do not wish to detain the House for long, but in reply to the hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) I would say I do not wish to look a gift horse in the mouth, but, on the other hand, I do wish to speak to the Amendments which I and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) have put down to the Amendment. Alas, those Amendments to the Amendment have not been called and cannot be moved. Otherwise, they

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  would have considerably improved the Amendment moved by the Home Secretary.
  I am most concerned about the position of the owner-occupiers of houses or flats or other property. As I understand it, this Amendment denies to an owner-occupier the right to dispose of his house or flat or other property as he may see fit. When the Home Secretary says it is nonsense for one to go to an estate agent when one is seeking the best price for a house I ask him to think again. I can assure him that during the time he was Chancellor of the Exchequer the Railways Board disposed of quite a number of houses privately in my constituency and certainly did not get the best price in doing so. I regard the Amendment as a thoroughly mean, unhelpful concession. I wish to amend it, but my Amendment has not been called. It is unhelpful to say that an owner-occupier can dispose of his property privately, but not through an estate agent or by advertising.
  Does the Home Secretary realise that this places very severe limitations on the freedom of an owner-occupier? In my Amendment I added the words "or letting", because to a layman like myself "disposal" means selling and not "or letting". However, I understand that in the lawyers' sense "disposal" includes letting.
  It is a fundamental right of an owner-occupier to do what he wishes with his home, and the Home Secretary is taking it away. It is another case of the man in Whitehall knowing best. The Home Secretary is acting under a dictum which one used to see in big letters as one crossed the frontier of Spain: "There is no freedom without order". Why cannot he trust the good sense of Englishmen to act fairly in these matters? It is not orders or dictates from the Home Secretary or anyone else that will improve race relations, but a growing sense of responsibility. The more one resorts to orders and the less to appeals to responsibility the more difficult it will be to overcome the very difficult problem of race relations—[Interruption.]—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): Order. This is not a Second Reading debate.
  Mr. Ridsdale: Some hon. Gentlemen opposite may not like my speech, but I wish that they would let me make it as I want.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must address himself to the Amendment.
  Mr. Ridsdale: Why should not the owner-occupier have the freedom of the open market to sell or let his house as he wishes? What reason has the Home Secretary to believe that an owner-occupier will not act in the best way to achieve racial harmony and good relations? This is bad law. We shall put 8,550,000 owner-occupiers in grave danger of breaking the law. They must be allowed to retain the right to choose.
  If the Home Secretary really believes that it is right to sell by private means, why is it wrong to sell by public means? In this Human Rights Year of the United Nations he is taking away a fundamental right of an owner-occupier to act as he thinks best and to sell his house if he wishes. He is taking away the freedom to choose. Does not the right hon. Gentleman trust his own countrymen to act as they see fit?
  Whilst I realise that it is difficult to divide against the Amendment, I shall certainly vote against the Third Reading of the Bill because of it.
  Mr. Orme: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker has selected Amendment No. 45 and the selection list says "plus three Amendments thereto". Is it not possible for Divisions to take place on them after the Government Amendment has been accepted?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: No. The words "three Amendments thereto" are in brackets. Mr. Speaker's selection indicates that the three Amendments to the Government Amendment can be referred to in the debate on the Amendment, but they are not selected. They cannot be called, and there cannot be Divisions on them.
  11.0 p.m.
  Dr. Winstanley: I am not an estate agent, not yet; I am not a solicitor; and I have certainly not disposed of as many houses as the Home Secretary, but I should like to ask the House in making up its mind about this Amendment and

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  the subject to which it relates to think about what would happen in reality in regard to private sales.
  I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) that the Home Secretary's Amendment is drawn pretty tightly. There are not many people who sell their houses wholly by word of mouth. There are many who seek to avoid estate agents, for very understandable reasons, and seek to sell their houses themselves, but usually they advertise them. Therefore, I accept what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said when he pointed out that this is drawing it rather narrowly. But in deciding whether or not this matters, let us think for a moment what happens under the Bill with regard to private sales within the definition the right hon. and learned Gentleman has in mind.
  We are not dealing here with making a whole series of acts illegal. We are dealing with procedural for introducing conciliation through the Race Relations Board. If a person who is anxious to purchase a house finds that the house is not sold to him, what can he do? He cannot automatically put some embargo on the sale. All he can do is to complain to the Race Relations Board that the house has not been sold to him, and I think the Board is going to say in 99 cases out of a hundred, "Hard luck". It is only when he can produce evidence that the house was not sold to him on grounds of racial discrimination that the Board is going to investigate the matter.
  If the Board get a constant series of complaints from someone that in his efforts to purchase a house through a particular estate agent he has constantly been told that the house has been sold, or that they have refused to give him leaflets about properties, and so on, this is precisely the kind of situation which the Board surely ought to investigate, because here one would have an organised pattern of discrimination practised systematically by an organisation or individual agent.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. There is no reference to the Race Relations Board in this Clause.
  Dr. Winstanley: Then I am at a loss to know what the Amendment is about.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are dealing with a particular limited Amendment, an Amendment proposed by the Home Secretary to provide that something shall not be unlawful. In discussing this Amendment it is not open to hon. Members to ventilate the whole question of what happens to the Race Relations Board.
  Dr. Winstanley: I hope you will immediately rebuke me if I stray out of order again, Sir Eric. My point is that this Amendment proposed by the Home Secretary has been objected to by many hon. Members because they believe it does not provide a sufficient safeguard. I am trying to explain that a safguard does exist in the circumstances in which this Amendment is set, namely, in the circumstances under which the procedures are carried out. But in view of your Ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will not pursue that particular line, save to say this. I want to put this question very clearly to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hertfordshire, East and others who have objected to this Amendment, in order to make then-position perfectly clear. They have objected to this, and I hoped the right hon. and learned Member would intervene to answer my question.
  If we take a private sale of a house, arranged privately by an individual, and the sale is arranged to a person named let us say, Mr. Arthur Brown—[Interruption.]—Mr. George Brown, if one likes, and let us accept that his credit-worthiness has been established and all the procedures have been gone through, and the householder who is making the private sale discovers—on the threshhold of doing the final irreversible act—when he meets this Mr. George Brown that Mr. George Brown is coloured. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that this person should be allowed to say, "I did not realise that you were coloured, and therefore I am not selling the house to you"? That is what this is about. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say "Yes" or "No"?
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: I am not saying that for a moment. Whatever the colour of the hypothetical Mr. Brown in the example, the transaction should obviously go through. All I am saying is that the number of transactions done on this basis

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  will be very small, and the text of the Amendment constitutes an invitation and inducement to people to sell and buy houses as a personal private transaction and eschew the benefits of professional advice, which they would be much wiser to avail themselves of.
  Mr. Gower: The hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) will not be surprised, because of his experience, if any Amendment is criticised for inadequacy or any other reason. This is what my hon. Friends have done.
  I recognise that the Home Secretary has made some concession but it is a very strange and unusual one. He is, in effect, saying that he does not like discrimination but apparently it is all right to discriminate as long as one does it out of sight. There is nothing very noble about that. As long as one does it without the advice of an estate agent or auctioneer it is apparently all right, but if one engages one of those professional men it becomes wrong. I can see no great virtue in that.
  The Home Secretary is admitting that this part of the Bill is unenforceable, that if one makes it completely an offence he knows full well that all this kind of thing will go on underground, that these transactions will not be done with the publicity which will enable the Bill to operate. Therefore, the only thing he has power to do is to enable some check to be made through the medium of the Amendment, which preserves some control through the limitation on the employment of an auctioneer or estate agent.
  It is a very slight concession. It is a most unusual one. I see nothing very wonderful about it. It is an admission by the Government that in reality this is an unenforceable part of the legislation.
  Hon. Members: Withdraw the Amendment.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: When the Home Secretary was proposing to make the concession in Committee I expressed some reservations about it but was told that it was necessary to placate the Opposition and carry people with us. As it is evidently not placating the Opposition he should withdraw it.
  Mr. Callaghan: Before we get carried away on too great a wave about this I had better restate the facts.
  The Amendment was pressed upon me from the Opposition Front Bench and hon. Gentlemen on the back benches opposite, including all three wings of the Conservative Party on this Bill—the progressives, the reactionaries and those who are either one or the other depending on the issue. So it was a united request. More than that—I say this seriously to my hon. Friends—it was also pressed upon me by hon. Members on this side. It was because it came unitedly from the Committee that I undertook to look at it, and it was on that basis that other Amendments were withdrawn.
  This ought to be stated as a fact. We can have a bit of fun and say, "If they do not like it and gibe at it, withdraw it", but there was strong feeling in the Committee—perhaps in rather a less heated or hilarious atmosphere than we have now and a rather better informed atmosphere than in some of the contributions that we have had—that this would provide a useful means of effecting a concession. It was on that basis that I tabled the Amendment, on the basis that I was asked to table it by general consent, and it is on that basis that I shall ask the House to vote for it. I would not dream of withdrawing it at this moment. I say this with due deference to my old schoolmate. I will meet him some other time on some other particular matter, but on this one I hope that he will not press me.
  I want to put the issue in relation to housing. Although I respect your Ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I must say that we heard some prejudices expressed by the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale). He even dragged in Third Reading in order to make his speech. He must recognise that all experience shows that discrimination in housing and employment is the most serious aspect of discrimination that we have to deal with. Moreover, we have many coloured citizens who desire to purchase their own houses and they must be free to do so. We cannot create ghettos. We cannot have areas where they may buy and areas where they may not. One owner-occupier is as good as any other, no matter what may be his colour. That is the basis on which this proceeds and it

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  is a fundamental part of the Bill. If we allowed a substantial measure of discrimination in housing, Parliament would be storing up great trouble for the nation in future. This is a serious case and that is why I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's proposal that we should widen the concession to the limits to which he wishes to go.
  I like and respect the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) and I say to him that this really is a useful concession. My experience is long and good about what my constituents do and the way they test their market. In Cardiff, they know pretty closely—I do not know what it is like in Hertfordshire—the value of their houses and now that values are going up about 10 per cent. a year they keep an even closer eye on them. An increasing number of people have a very good idea of the value of their houses and do not wish to employ an estate agent. They wish to dispose of their houses privately and undertake the transaction. It is worth while providing for those cases.
  Where the transaction is private, then no mischief is done. This provision does not stop anyone disposing of his house. It merely says, "If you advertise the sale of your house, you shall not specify, 'no coloureds need apply'". That is our purpose. I think we are all agreed that public offensiveness of this sort should be outlawed. That is why the House gave the Bill its Second Reading. Similarly, estate agents cannot be used for purpose of advancing discrimination.
  The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked me about the position of a surveyor. The surveyor is a person who is engaged by both parties to give a valuation. He is not a person who, in the words of the Amendment
  "…brings together or takes steps to bring together the person proposing to dispose of the interest and the prospective purchaser thereof, or acts as an auctioneer."
  Therefore, the surveyor engaged professionally in order to give a valuation is excluded.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: I hope that it is as the right hon. Gentleman says, but he will appreciate that, if an agreement is made conditional to a valuation, the act of the valuer in giving his joint valuation is of course bringing the people together
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  in the sense that he is bringing them to a consensus, a contractual agreement.
  Mr. Callaghan: I disagree with that. [An HON. MEMBER: "You are not a lawyer."] I thank heaven that I am not a lawyer sometimes when I hear the differing views which they put upon simple propositions. But I am advised, and I take my stand on the ordinary understanding of this matter, that a surveyor is engaged by two persons who have been brought together. He is engaged to give a valuation and he is not to be construed as being a person who has brought together the person who wishes to dispose of the property and a person who wishes to buy it.
  11.15 p.m.
  Dr. Miller: Will my right hon. Friend give me a little clarification? The practice in Scotland is somewhat different from that in England. In Scotland estate agents are neither so popular nor so prevalent as they are in England and houses are sold by lawyers if not sold privately. Would a lawyer come into this category if he and not an estate agent were acting for this purpose?
  Mr. Callaghan: The words are clear. If he
  "does any of the following acts in the course of a trade, business or profession, that is to say, he brings together or takes steps to bring together the person proposing to dispose of the interest and the prospective purchaser".
  If a solicitor does that in the course of following a trade, business or profession, clearly he would be caught by the Bill in that connection, whether in Scotland, England or Wales, where these things sometimes happen.
  I do not wish the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) to be misled by an aside which I just caught and which suggested that "disposal" would include lettings. I want to make it clear that it does not.
  Mr. Hogg: I understood from the terms of the Amendment that leasehold was included. I think that that is expressly stated.
  Mr. Callaghan: I do not want to get into deep water, but leaseholds are included and I understand that in the accepted sense a leasehold is for a relatively long period. I understood the

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  intention of the hon. Member for Harwich to be to deal with short lettings of, say, 12 months. I did not want him to be under any misapprehension as the result of an aside. I know that that does not make it any more palatable to him, but I did not want there to be any misunderstanding.
  Sir Harmar Nicholls: Did I understand the Home Secretary to say that his legal advice was that the words of the Amendment as they stood would not preclude a private owner-occupier from advertising his house for sale provided that the offensive words which he has mentioned were not included in the advertisement?
  Mr. Callaghan: There seems to be some misunderstanding about this. Anybody can advertise his house for sale and there is nothing in the Bill to prevent anybody from doing so. Perhaps I have misunderstood the hon. Gentleman.
  Sir Harmar Nicholls: I want to get this clear. There is no question of the house having been publicly advertised by the owner-occupier and the fact that he has merely advertised it attracting penalties under the Bill?
  Mr. Callaghan: The answer is, "Yes". That brings him within the scope of the Bill.
  Mr. Hogg: I do not know whether this is a purely private fight or whether I am allowed to take part. [HON. MEMBERS: "You started it."] That gives me a sort of locus standi. The Home Secretary perfectly rightly said that this discussion originated on this side of the House. I was one of those who originated it and I was supported from both sides. My Amendments are like bacon and eggs—excellent when eaten apart, but even better when eaten together. This was, in fact, intended to be taken together with a number of other Amendments, and it is not for me to accept the responsibility if the Home Secretary decides to take egg by egg and the bacon by bacon while, at the same time, omitting some of the more important parts.
  It has been said that there is an element of horseplay between the two sides of the House, but that is not true.
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  The Home Secretary has a case of merit, and I have tried, in spite of the fact that I have not met with universal approval, to have a purely objective attitude; an attitude which was consistent.
  The value of this Amendment has been under-estimated. During the Committee stage it was attacked from both sides of the House, by the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) saying it was so enormous a concession on the part of the Government that the proverbial coach and horses could be driven through the Bill if it was accepted, and by my hon. and leaned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell). He is somewhere about. Like the poor, he is always with us, and he mentioned, as did many of my hon. Friends during the course of that rather hilarious little debate, that so far from the hon. Member for York being right, the Amendment was valueless. They said that, they claimed, because statistically, it represented so tiny a proportion of the sales of houses in this country.
  My own view is that both the hon. Member for York and my hon. and learned Friend were wrong. I agree that the vast majority of people who own houses sell them through the medium of an estate agent or by way of advertisement and, sometimes, through both; but, after a great deal of hesitation—and I must tell the House that I had great hesitation about this—I decided that it should be included in the Bill if I was to be consistent in my attitude.
  I say that because I have consistently said that one must draw a distinction between the morality of the individual case and the social consequences resulting from a large number of cases piling up. One cannot get away from the fact that half of the immigrants buy their own houses. It is a fact, because it is recorded in the second report of the Race Relations Board, and one cannot get out of it. My hon. and learned Friend probably underestimates the number of people who do without an estate agent and also do without advertising and I think that it is in the nature of things that I cannot give the numbers who do.
  It cannot be ignored because we do not know how many people sell their houses privately. But, if they do so and

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  select their purchaser on discriminatory grounds, then that is consistent with what I have said from the beginning; namely, that they should be allowed to do so whether it is morally desirable or not morally desirable. But if they use one of the principal means for selling their house, and unless one is to exempt freehold property altogether, then on that assumption, I cannot see how they could be exempt. If we can be told how it can be exempted, I would wish that it could be given sympathetic consideration.
  I want on the whole to present a consistent view from this side of the House as to what we think ought to be done in this kind of situation. I have tried to do so, admittedly I have sometimes fallen foul of the Government, and sometimes of my hon. Friends. My view has been consistent. It has been that we are legislating for social conditions and not private morality. This is the line which I draw.
  So far as units of accommodation are concerned, I have tried, in one way or another, to put an exemption limit by a numerical maximum. That seems sensible. If people choose to operate through the large agencies, the total effect of which is to create a social condition, and subject to the other limitations I have sought to insert into the Bill, it does not seem to me that I can think of a way in which one can exempt them altogether. If, on the other hand, they choose to use their own discretion, refuse to pay commission to an agent, select their own purchaser, it seems that they are indulging in an act of private morality, and I ought not to intervene. I said that I wondered whether this was a private fight or one in which I was entitled to intervene. I am bound to say that I felt in honour bound to the right hon. Gentleman to state my conclusions, and to say why I supported the Amendment.
  Amendment agreed to.

Clause 8

  EXCEPTIONS IN THE CASE OF EMPLOYMENT
  Mr. Hattersley: I beg to move Amendment No. 47, in page 4, line 40, leave out 'ten' and insert 'twenty-five.'
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  This Amendment deals with certain temporary exemptions provided by the Bill in the employment sphere. I should emphasise that the exemptions are, in the Government's opinion, and should so remain, essentially temporary. The proposition I am putting forward is simply for an extension in the temporary exemptions, for the Government could not conceive of a situation in which we were prepared to grant permanent exemption for any sort or class of employers under those provisions of the Bill which insist that there should be no discrimination in employment.
  As the Bill stands, the time exemption is in two parts. For the first two years of the Measure's operation, firms employing 10 people or less are exempt. That provides an exemption for firms employing 14 per cent. of the working population. The extension of that exemption in the Bill is for a third year, in which firms employing five people or less continue to be exempt. That third year exemption will cover firms employing 6 per cent. of the working population. It was suggested in Committee that a more substantial and longer exemption was necessary if the objectives of the temporary exemption were to be achieved.
  The first objective is to give the small company time to prepare for the effects of the Bill, and to make necessary adjustments. The second objective is to make sure that the Race Relations Board is not presented, in the first year or two years of the operation of the Act, with more cases than it can reasonably or rationally examine in the way that my right hon. Friend expects.
  These exemptions never were, and never can be, intended as a means by which the force of the Bill is reduced. All our experience suggests that the immigrant population probably has greater difficulties in finding employment in smaller firms than in larger ones. Our attempts to provide exemptions of a sufficiently long period, covering sufficiently large numbers of firms, are intended to do no more than to make the Bill operate smoothly, and make the firm which must eventually be covered by it have the opportunity of adjusting to its proposals.
  It was said in Committee that there is no way of knowing what the exact figure of the exemption should be. There are

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  no magic numbers which are right for a certain number of years for a certain sector of the economy. My right hon. Friend and I certainly take the point. The decision as to which firms should be exempt, and when, and for how long is in part an arbitrary decision and certainly a subjective decision. In consequence of that, we were prepared to take into account the views expressed in Committee that the purpose we seek to achieve would be more easily achieved if the exemption was increased. This is exactly what the Committee was promised would be the nature and purpose of the Amendment. That is, that firms employing 25 people or less are exempted for the first two years—that is, firms employing 20 per cent. of the population—and firms employing 10 people or less are exempted for the following two years after the initial exemption; that covers 14 per cent. of the population.
  We hope that the Amendment will commend itself to the House in the knowledge that our intention is simply to make the Bill work smoothly and is in no way to reduce the effects of the Bill or its force in employment situations.
  11.30 p.m.
  Mr. Hogg: This time it is I who am looking a gift horse in the mouth, and looking it in the mouth rather squarely. I must accept the gift horse for what it is worth because my own Amendment No. 49, in page 4, line 42, leave out from 'household' to 'to' in line 43, has not been selected for discussion, although it is an Amendment which I would have sought leave to divide upon had it been selected because we attach considerable importance to it.
  Again we are concerned with the exemption limits which are acceptable in a Bill of this kind, and again we are concerned with a difference of degree which divides the two sides of the House, without perhaps the gulf being as wide as some people have made it out to be.
  The figure of 25 has been substituted by the Under-Secretary of State, coupled with an increase of the tapering period from two to four years. It would be churlish of me not to recognise that these are significant improvements in the Bill from my point of view. On the other hand, it would be equally unrealistic to
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  say that they were satisfactory improvements from my point of view in the sense that I can accept them with a glad heart.
  Both sides agree that an exemption limit of some kind is desirable. Both sides agree that to impose an employment Clause on the public without an exemption limit would be impossible. The two points at issue are whether there should be a tapering period and what the exemption limit should be. The Government appear to think that they have satised the requirements by giving a number of figures showing the number of people employed in small units and showing that this number is large, and arguing from that that the Bill must cover them sooner or later.
  I do not accept that, for a number of reasons. Obviously the exact line at which one draws the limits either of tapering or of exemption is a matter of judgment, and therefore in itself arbitrary. In favour of 25, which is the preliminary limit chosen by the Government and which my Amendment, had it been selected, would have made indefinite, is that it is the figure chosen by the American Code—not that this is conclusive in our favour because our situation is different, but it is significant that it was chosen by the American Code—and the Street Committee chose either 25 or 50;I have forgotten which. At any rate, it chose a figure which was not less than 25.
  We therefore start from the proposition that this is not an unreasonable figure to choose. I am not impressed by the number of individuals who may be employed in establishments of less than 25. Those of us who read the Donovan Committee's Report—I cannot pretend to have read it all yet, but I hope that I shall have read it all certainly before the end of the recess —recognise how many of our fellow countrymen serve in establishments which employ very large numbers of people. The numbers of individuals serving in establishments employing 5,000 or more people are very large.
  The point which we are making in seeking for a high exemption limit in the absence of tapering off is basically threefold. First, one gets progressively unrewarding the more one bogs down in investigations into small establishments. We do not think that it is an answer that there are a very large number of people

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  serving in small establishments, because we notice that a large number of small establishments are involved and the number of investigations would have to be very high to result in a significant change in pattern.
  Secondly, as I have pointed out before, we think that the problems involved in small establishments become different in kind when the scale dwindles below a threshold. The problems of management in a large establishment are easily solved. If one man does not get on with another or if a small group forms up against a smaller one, various arrangements are open to the management of the large establishment whereby the situation can be solved without causing a great deal—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are not discussing the large establishments on the Amendment. We are discussing only whether the figure should be 10 or 25.
  Mr. Hogg: We are discussing whether it should be 25, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I am indicating why I favour the higher figure rather than the lower.
  I was answering the Under-Secretary's argument that a large number of people were employed in the establishments within the critical range which he sought to alter. I was trying to establish on our side that the management problems involved above the critical threshold figure must be intrinsically different in kind, because there are various solutions of personal difficulties and personal antagonisms open to management in a large establishment—I am prepared to take the threshold to some extent at an arbitrary figure—which are not open to the management of a small establishment.
  Then, it is said that there should be tapering off. This involves two fallacies. The first is that the Bill will stay on the Statute Book unamended for an indefinite time, which I simply do not believe to be the case. The Bill is designed to amend an Act of Parliament dated 1965, and I simply do not believe that experience in this novel sphere of legislation will leave it unamended for another five years. I doubt whether it will leave it unamended for another three years. Therefore, it is foolish to insert periods of four years like that which the Under-Secretary proposes
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  in the Amendments. It is far better to take a figure which for the moment we consider to be satisfactory and stick to it.
  Secondly, I feel that we would create good will among those who are in a relatively humble way of business by not imposing on them at this stage a time limit beyond which they came within the ambit of a law which they may well view as oppressive.
  Let us see how we get on with the big operators. Let us see how it works. Let us get experience of how the Bill operates. The Race Relations Board will have plenty on its plate with the employment Clause and the accommodation Clause for more than two years and, I think, for more than four years. Let us gain experience before we plunge out into the jungle of small establishments, small operators, problems of individual management, problems of individual antagonisms. If the Bill can justify itself by experience, it very likely will succeed over the range of small establishments without further legislation. I should not be a bit surprised. If it fails, I doubt whether further legislation will help it.
  As matters are, I would be disposed to think that the Government would have been wise to accept the experience of the American code and put in 25 without a tapering clause. The Government would have been wise to accept the Street Committee's recommendations without putting in a tapering clause. I cannot see why they have insisted on this limitation to their wisdom.
  Although it is not open to us to divide, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in view of the selection of the Chair which of course we loyally accept, as we have loyally accepted every selection that the Chair has made, I think I should make my protest as I have made it. Although we on this side of the House accept the Amendment, we think it is insufficient, and even now we are not above asking the Government whether they would not in another place consider an indication that it ought to be of more indefinite significance than they have hitherto thought.
  Mr. Heffer: I think that the Government have gone as far as they should go in this matter. I certainly hope that they will resist the extremely friendly

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  blandishments from the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), since this is a compromise Clause. There was pressure, if one may use that term, from industry on both sides in relation to this. If one went beyond this the Clause would be defeated, because it would mean that a considerable section of the working population would be completely exempt from ever becoming involved in complete integration. I accepted this very reluctantly, but on the ground that there ought to be an easing-in period until final and complete integration was achieved. I think the four years is about right. Anything beyond that would be wrong, and I therefore hope that my hon. Friends will not go any further in this matter and will keep the Bill as it stands.
  Mr. Kenneth Lewis: I share the reservations of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) on this matter. I cannot understand why the Government are coming so low down in the scale on this Bill, since they did not come down so low in nominating firms of certain numbers in previous Bills, for instance in the Prices and Incomes Bill. It is extremely difficult administratively to deal with firms that are employing few people since there is such a vast number of them. It may seem relatively difficult for us to pass legislation which does not apply the same rules across the board, but my right hon. and learned Friend in making the point that we are in a new sphere here and ought to try it out on larger organisations made a valid point. By bringing the number so low, the right hon. Gentleman will add to discrimination, because the Bill lays down regulations for both employment and dismissal.
  The head of a small firm will be careful whom he employs for fear that, should he later have to dismiss the man, the firm will be charged with discrimination. It is, therefore, relatively easy to get round the subsection dealing with employment. No small firm need employ anybody it does not wish to employ in that a valid excuse can be made, covering up discrimination; the inability of the applicant to do a certain job. that
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  a suitable job is not available and so on. This means that although a small firm might wish to employ an immigrant, it will avoid doing so for fear of being charged, at a later date, should redundancy occur, with discrimination.
  11.45 p.m.
  A larger firm need not have this fear. A company employing 100, 1,000 or 5,000 people can keep an individual on its books for a few months without much difficulty. A small firm employing only a handful of men is in a different position, and I fear that this provision will add to, rather than detract from, discrimination in employment in these circumstances.
  Sir S. Summers: The Government assert that they are doing something in favour of coloured immigrants by ensuring that after four years it becomes an offence to discriminate against them. When one considers how this will work in small firms, one must wonder whether this will really benefit immigrants. Are we doing a service to immigrants if we make it possible for them to force then-way into firms? We must bear in mind the personal relations that exist among workers in particularly small firms. I trust, therefore, that further thought will be given to this matter.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Mr. Hattersley: I beg to move Amendment No. 48, in page 4, line 41, leave out 'in or'.
  This proposal deals with exemptions, but on this occasion we seek to tighten up, rather than extend, the definition of the word. On three occasions the Bill refers to persons employed
  "…in or for the purposes of a private household."
  It was suggested in Committee that the presence of those words might imply that the calculation of exemptions in terms of employment could include those who, while not working permanently in a private household as an intimate, personal part of it, perhaps living in it doing, say, domestic work within its boundaries, might include those who occasionally call, for example, to clean windows, repair the television set or do some other temporary and occasional task. Clearly, the exemption for private households in terms of numbers should not apply. By asking the House to delete these words, we are

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  asking the House to remove any possible ambiguity and to make clear that the exemption applies to people in households as originally intended.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendments made: No. 50, in page 4, line 43, leave out 'year' and insert 'two years'.
  No. 51, in line 45, leave out 'five' and insert 'ten'.
  No. 52, in line 45, leave out 'in or'.
  No. 53, in page 5, line 2, after 'discriminate', insert 'against any person'.—[Mr. Hattersley.]
  Mr. Rose: I beg to move Amendment No. 54, in page 5, line 4, after 'faith', insert
  'with prior approval of the Race Relations Board'.
  In Committee we debated in full the implications of the so-called racial violence Clause. The Committee, in its wisdom, by a small majority on two occasions rejected Amendments moved by my hon. Friends the Members for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) and Southall (Mr. Bidwell). I stress that these were very small majorities and hon. Members on the second bench below the Gangway opposite fought very strenuously over this matter, which we believe to be one of the most fundamental issues in the Bill.
  Sir Harmar Nicholls: What is wrong with a small majority?
  Mr. Rose: The hon. Member was not a member of the Committee. I have not seen him here very much tonight. Perhaps he will do me the courtesy of listening.
  This Amendment would at least remove a very strong objection to the Clause as it stands. The test of what is a reasonable balance remains an objective test. It depends on whether the particular employer in the particular circumstances thinks that he is preserving what he considers a bad balance. There is no question of objectivity in this test, but it is a matter of what the employer in good faith feels reasonable in the circumstances. It does not apparently depend on what the Race Relations Board considers a bad balance.
  Mr. Grieve: Surely, as the Clause stands, if he thinks it is not in good faith, the person discriminated against is entitled to take it to the Race Relations Board and the Board will determine whether it is in good faith or not?
  Mr. Rose: The hon. and learned Member entirely misses that this is the difference between intention and result. The Clause does not define either. The hon. and learned Member also misses the point about the person on whom there is an onus to show that it is in good faith. Is he the person against whom discrimination is alleged, or the person whom it is alleged is discriminated against? In the absence of a definition, the burden might lie on the complainant to show bad faith rather than on the employer to show good faith.
  The Clause also misses what I would call "vertical discrimination", which, I assure my hon. Friend the Undersecretary, has nothing to do with vertical integration. This is the way I describe the kind of difficulties where there may be a balance in the numbers of the labour force and individuals are not allowed to rise above a certain level. We know of the case of the bus guard who is not allowed to become a bus inspector. This is more concerned with levels of employment.
  Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Surely the hon. Gentleman recalls that the bus conductor who could not become a bus inspector was prevented from becoming a bus inspector, not by his employer, but by his co-employees.
  Mr. Rose: The hon. Gentleman must not accuse me of referring to an individual case. I was using this as a general example. I could have cited many examples where people are not allowed to rise beyond a certain level. For example, they are not allowed to become foremen or managers. I am not referring to any individual case of discrimination. Even if it is conceded that good faith may rest with the employer—this is the important point that hon. Members opposite fail to grasp—the employer's action, which may be in good faith, may objectively discriminate. This is why the Board, which is experienced in these matters, should define what a balance is.

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  I have never taken the view that a so-called fair balance is itself discriminatory. I find the principle of a quota somewhat abhorrent, but it may well facilitate integration at a later stage. I said in Committee that I accept that in some employments there is a threshold beyond which, if more coloured people are employed, the white personnel will leave and what might be termed an industrial ghetto situation is created.
  I realise what my right hon. Friends are trying to do by the Clause. It is very laudable, but the result may well be different from what they intend, because this would be valid only if the purpose was to create a fair balance and to promote integration in the future. As it stands, the Clause could provide for a situation where the balance is by no means fair, except in the mind of the person against whom discrimination is alleged. For this reason, I should like a far more objective view to be taken of this, a view which would allow the Board, on the basis of its wide experience, to decide, having been consulted by the employer, whether in a given case it would be right for the employer to apply a certain quota or arrange his labour force in a given way. This would make the existing Clause far less objectionable. In those circumstances, I should be prepared to accept the so-called racial balance Clause, abhorrent as many of us find it.
  I make no apologies for raising this at this late hour. I believe that this is the fundamental weakness of the Bill. Even if we cannot be given an assurance tonight, I hope that it will not be too late to correct in another place what is a major defect in an excellent Bill. It would be a shame if the Bill were to go on to the Statute Book with this major defect in it, after all the work which has been done in race relations legislation since the 1965 Act. I therefore ask my hon. Friend seriously to consider accepting the Amendment, even at this stage, in order to allow the Board to make the test, rather than leaving this at the discretion and will of the employer.
  Mr. Sydney Bidwell: As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) has said, many of us on this side who are well experienced in
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  immigration questions, particularly as they affect matters of employment, regard the Clause as it stands as the greatest weakness in the Bill. However, we realise that the wording of the Clause, particularly these words—
  "The Secretary of State may, if it appears to him expedient to do so, by order repeal subsections (2) and (3) above"—
  can be regarded as a tentative or transitional situation.
  12 m.
  What many of us on this side of the House feel is that this transitional period might prove to be extremely dangerous to the central purpose of the Bill, which is to bring about not simply integration, which is a rather harsh word, but human harmony in all fields, and especially in employment. I said in Committee many times, and other Members said it as well, that it was employment opportunities which were supreme. In an earlier discussion it was suggested by my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government that housing was the most important part of the Bill. It may be the most sensitive part of the Bill at this stage, but in my view it is not the central part of the Bill. The central part of the Bill is equal job opportunities for all people, consistent with their skills and abilities and educational qualifications, regardless of the colour of their skin or their ethnic origin.
  I regard these subsections of Clause 8, as they stand, as an impediment to that, because an employer can say he has got sufficient employees and can put up a notice, lawfully within the Bill as it stands, saying "No more immigrants wanted". Not "No immigrants wanted"; but "No more immigrants wanted". Not "No blacks wanted" but "No more blacks wanted". Not "No Irishmen wanted" but "No more Irishmen wanted". My hon. Friend shakes his head, but that becomes quite lawful. It may not be the intention; it may not happen in that way; and I hope the conciliatory spirit of the Bill blossoms and flowers and that this kind of thing will be, as it is, totally unthinkable; but we are dealing with legislation of which the words will be interpreted, in the courts, perhaps, eventually, and by the conciliation

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  machinery and the Race Relations Board. Clause 8(2) says,
  "It shall not be unlawful…"
  In other words, the whole central purpose of the Bill is outlawed. It starts by making unlawful discrimination on grounds of colour or ethnic origin and then kicks that provision in the teeth. It opens wide a way of discrimination. I say to my hon. Friend that there is considerable depth of feeling about this on this side of the House. Not least is there depth of feeling in the hon. Member for Southall who has a considerable amount of immigration experience.
  In Committee I read a letter about the intake of apprentices by London Transport. Someone in my constituency was complaining about present quota arrangements by which only three in ten of our Indian boys were taken into apprenticeships. I argued then along the lines I have argued earlier this evening, and there was no reply to the points I made in that discussion. I hope I shall not be without a reply this evening. It was suggested that there are in industry enormous difficulties in this matter. Of course there are, but there is a great sense of fair play.
  In Committee my hon. Friend rejected the terminology of "quota"; he said it was not a quota arrangement. Whatever we call it, it becomes a quota arrangement, but it is not defined. We argued about the matter of percentages, but we did not get even a figure of percentages; we did not get any numbers at all. The Bill does not deal with an establishment but sections of an establishment. I asked in Committee how it was this arose, because in my experience in industry it does not arise. One would be hard put to it to find an employer who could immediately say how many Irishmen he had, how many Cypriots he had, how many Indians, how many Pakistanis, how many other people of differing national origins. He might even be not all that conscious of colour, especially if his black and white employees were used to working together. Similarly, school children cannot tell one how many coloured and how many white children there are in their class.
  Therefore, I hope that my hon. Friend will at least meet our general complaint about this part of the Clause. It is
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  dangerous, undefinable and virtually inoperable in any sense of legality, and therefore it is best left out.
  I am not enamoured by arguments from the C.B.I., which has not fallen over itself to support the idea of legislation, or from the T.U.C., which has only been a reluctant accepter. The leading industrialists to whom I have spoken on the idea of racial legislation have said, "Leave it alone. We do not want it. We want to please ourselves." We heard that from hon. Members opposite when we discussed other matters.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are on Report. The hon. Gentleman must address himself to the Amendment.
  Mr. Bidwell: I do not think that the arguments from either side of industry for the Clause—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We cannot argue about the Clause in general, but only the Amendment, as to whether the words:
  "with prior approval of the Race Relations Board"
  should be added in line four.
  Mr. Bidwell: Having regard to the discussions in Committee about the point we now seek to amend, we can go so far as to say that employers can abuse this—and not only employers. Sometimes they hide behind the activities of their workers, and the workers hide behind the activities of their employers. If the Bill is to be effective this nonsense must stop. There will be no qualified body other than the Race Relations Board, and because my hon. Friend's Amendment is an effort not only to change but to improve the Bill I commend it to the House.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: There is a much better body than the Race Relations Board to decide these matters. That is the men at work, whether employers or employees, on the shop floor in the factory. They are far better qualified than the Board to decide these very practical matters.
  One thing that has not been pointed out is that the Clause refers only to a very limited group—first-generation immigrants. It is made perfectly clear in subsection (4) that those born and

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  educated in this country are not caught by the Bill, and that is important.
  The Amendment is wholly impracticable. It is wrong in principle that the Board should be asked to intervene on the floor of factories and offices to manage their own businesses for those in industry. I cannot imagine that the Board wants to be asked to do this, and I would hope that it would oppose the Amendment.
  It is a practical question. In many plants there are already large numbers of coloured people. They are very useful. They contribute a great deal to our country. But it is fact, whether we like it or not—and I believe most of us deplore it—that when some-thirds of the staff of a paint shop in a car factory in Coventry or on night-shift in an hotel in London are members of the coloured community, there is a tendency for white workers no longer to stay there. What happens is that the shop in question or the shift in question tends to become all-immigrant, all black. This is some thing all of us would deplore.
  Therefore it must be reasonable to allow the employer, the manager of the shop, the shop steward in the shop, to apply his commonsense and try to arrange some kind of racial balance there so that this problem does not arise. This is a really practical consideration, and I am sure it is one of the considerations which prompted the Government to include this Clause in the first place.
  Then there is the other practical aspect. If for some reason in a particular shop, factory or canteen, there comes to be difficulty between one group of people and another—and it may be a difficulty on racial grounds because whatever Act we pass will not change the nature of human beings—it must be right to allow the shop steward, the manager of the plant, to move people around in that factory to maintain some sort of balance so that, human relations being what they are, the plant is not brought to a standstill.
  Therefore, the practical reasons of an employer keeping his production line going and a shop steward maintaining harmony in the shop, there must be this power. It is quite wrong that the Race
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  Relations Board should be brought into the act and asked to decide in advance every little detailed consideration of balance which an employer or shop steward may wish to bring about. I hope that the Government will not accept the Amendment.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: Of course my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) is absolutely right in saying that this is the most offensive part of the Bill to those of us who have supported the idea of legislation for a long time, and who have tried to strengthen those parts of the Bill we thought were weak. We failed in Committee to have the Clause deleted, and this is by way of being a half-measure to improve the situation now that we have to accept that there is going to be a racial balance Clause included in the Bill.
  But, if I may say so, it was made clear in Committee, and indeed it has been made clear again tonight in the speech of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths), that when we are talking about the nature of the racial balance Clause it is something that one cannot talk about with any great precision. It is a matter of trying to access the undefinable in the particular atmosphere of a particular shop floor in a particular factory. That is why the Government, I think rightly, have said they do not want to be bound to any idea of quotas, any arithmetical proportion of the labour force which would be acceptable. It must be a question of judgment in each single case.
  What we are saying in this Amendment is that we have to decide whose judgment is going to be final in assessing what is reasonable. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds, speaking as he does for the C.B.I. on this matter, has said that the best persons to decide that issue are those who are actually on the shop floor. All I can say to him is that if that were true we would not need a Bill in this particular section of community relations, because if the people who are on the shop floor at the moment were not discriminating there would be no need for the Bill.
  The fact is, as was brought out in the P.E.P. Report, that we do need a Bill to deal with discrimination in industry,

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  and that is because people on the shop floor are discriminating..
  12.15 a.m.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: The hon. Gentleman must recognise that those on the shop floor will be acting within the context of the Bill as a whole, which outlaws racial discrimination. The Amendment is on whether or not they should have to get in touch with the Race Relations Board before they can move a man from one part of the plant to another or before they can decide how they are going to avoid a certain shop becoming all black or all white.
  Mr. Lyon: I am not impressed by the argument that those who have been discriminating and, therefore, have provoked legislation should be able to decide what is reasonable in relation to an offence arising in the course of the Bill. It may be the kind of factory posed by the Home Secretary in Committee when discussing this racial balance Clause. It may be the case of the reasonable employer who has done his best in the past to employ coloured people and because of his indulgence has reached the limit where his white employees are saying that they will no longer stay and, therefore, ask for some protection against the calling in of any further coloured persons. It may be that there are those situations, but it is wrong that even where the good employer is acting on the dictates perhaps of his own workpeople the decision about what is a reasonable balance should be left to them.
  One must recollect that at the moment there are areas of employment where discrimination has been practised so successfully that no coloured person has been employed. When the Bill comes into operation it will be necessary for those areas to accept coloured employees at some stages if coloured people wish to apply for jobs and are equipped to do them. In those circumstances the danger that we have always foreseen about the racial balance Clause will become apparent. The racial balance Clause will be used so that as few coloured employees as possible will be taken on. I should rot want to think that in such a situation they were to be the deciders of what was reasonable.
  Mr. Hattersley: I am sure that the House does not want to proceed on what
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  is becoming an increasingly false premise increasingly widely held. My hon. Friend will realise that in interpreting what is a reasonable racial balance in all the circumstances under the other provisions of the Bill and under the general way in which the Bill is operated and when the powers in the Bill are in operation, if he or an immigrant believes that he has been rejected for employment because a firm is operating the malpractices to which he has referred, he or the immigrant will be able to appeal to the Race Relations Board and make the normal complaint, and the decision will be in no way the decision of the company but determined in the normal way. To have a debate in which it is stated from both sides that the decision is that of the firm is to have a debate on a totally false premise.
  Mr. Lyon: If my hon. Friend had allowed me to develop my argument I should have saved him that intervention. I was dealing with the argument of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds that the people to decide whether it was reasonable were the employers or the employees.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Within the context of the Bill.
  Mr. Lyon: Yes, within the context of the Bill, but the hon. Gentleman said that they were the persons to decide. I accept that under the Bill they are not necessarily the persons who will decide and that the person who has been discriminated against can go to the Race Relations Board so that, willy nilly, despite the opinion of the C.B.I. and the hon. Gentleman, in the end the decision has to go to the Race Relations Board. The question that one has to ask is whether it should go further, whether it should go to the court to decide, whether if the Race Relations Board says that it is unreasonable the employer can go further and say to the court, "The Race Relations Boards says that we are being unreasonable. We say that in all the circumstances we are being reasonable." It is here that I want to draw the line.
  I accept that we are dealing with an amorphous situation not easily definable in judicial terms. It is not the kind of thing that a court can easily assess. It will have to take evidence about the

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  kinds of pressure going on inside a factory. I do not think that a court, even with assessors, will necessarily be able to do it. I doubt whether it can do it successfully at all. That is why I have grave reservations about the racial balance Clause.
  But if this is to be done, let us ensure that it is done by someone who can really assess the atmosphere in a factory —someone who is not a part of the factory. The only body I can see in that rôle is the Race Relations Board. If we accept that, in disputed cases, the Board can make a decision, clearly it is not going to be excluded. It should be the final judge of what is reasonable. If it is to be the final judge, there is much to be said for the view that it should be the prior judge.
  If any employer wishes to claim in defence that he has reached a reasonable balance, there is much to be said for his consulting the Board for its view. It would safeguard his future position. If this is going to be done in a lot of cases, it is probably wise that it should be done in all cases. In these circumstances, there is much to be said for Amendment No. 54. My Amendment No. 56 would put it at a later stage, but I prefer No. 54 and will therefore not press mine. I hope that the Government will reconsider their attitude.
  Mr. Heffer: What the Amendment asks for may seem a very good thing to those hon. Members with little experience of industrial life. I thought that the object of the Bill was to conciliate between the various races in order to solve problems. The rôle of the Race Relations Board is to conciliate. But the Amendment suggests that it should enter prior to there being any problem whatever in a factory. The sponsors of the Amendment have it the wrong way round.
  I have heard statements tending to be somewhat of a slander on the overwhelming mass of British trade unionists and particularly their shop stewards and officials. There are pockets of people in the trade union movement who are prejudiced, but there are thousands of shop stewards who are daily dealing with problems not only of normal industrial life but of racial integration in factories where the Board will never be brought
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  in because the problems are being dealt with on the shop floor. The few dockers who marched on this House do not represent the general view of trade unionists and of the workers in the industry. We have to allow the normal machinery of industrial conciliation to operate first. If that breaks down, then the Board should be brought in.
  Let us get this problem of racial balance into proper perspective. The danger is that certain unscrupulous employers may start using immigrants as cheap labour, turning certain jobs into jobs for immigrants only. In Committee I gave an example from the United States where a man can be a railway porter only if he is a negro. The negroes now have those jobs completely within their control, and a white man cannot get in. This is racial discrimination in reverse and it is a situation which we do not want in this country. We never want a particular job to be dominated by all black workers, or by Pakistanis, or Indians.
  The Bill makes a clear distinction: if a coloured boy is born in this country, irrespective of his ethnic origin, he is a British citizen and the problem is not related to him; it relates only to immigrants, and for their protection we need something like the Clause until the problem is finally eased away altogether.
  We have to be very careful about this problem and that is why the T.U.C. has adopted the attitude which it takes to this matter. Is the T.U.C. racialist? Is the T.U.C. not prepared to ensure genuine racial integration? Does anybody seriously suggest that? My experience in the trade union movement teaches me that the very opposite is true. The normal industrial machinery must be used first. If it breaks down, the Board and its conciliation machinery can be brought in.
  I ask my hon. Friend not to persist with their contention that the Clause is racialist in concept. It is the very reverse. Whatever the Bill says, there will continue to be unscrupulous employers who are racialist and who endeavour to get round it, and some workers will be racialist, but they will be in a minority and I hope that the House will accept the trade unions' view of the problem.
  Mr. Richard: Of course nobody is suggesting that my hon. Friend the

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  Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) is racialist, or that the T.U.C. is racialist, or that the vast majority of working people are racialist. My hon. Friend says that we should use the machinery of industrial conciliation first. That is fine for those jobs which employ trade union labour, but what of those employers who do not employ trade union labour? What industrial machinery does my hon. Friend suggest that we use in those circumstances? What status and locus does the trade union movement have there? The answer is absolutely none—or, with respect to my hon. Friend, the answer is that it is not good enough to stand up and say that a fair part of the trade union movement is not racialist and that, therefore, we do not need this Clause. I have said time and time again, that we are dealing with a most difficult and delicate subject and that it is high time the country got out of thinking that, because a subject is difficult and delicate, then that is a reason for inaction.
  12.30 a.m.
  We have heard the expression before during this debate, but I say that one can drive a coach and horses through this Bill so far as this Clause is concerned. I have said it before, but the Government do not seem to have realised the fact, nor dealt with the problem. If I may say so, it seems to me that although it may thought to be a semilegal point—and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Walton will listen to me—where one is trying to write into the Bill some provision which at one moment gives legal protection to the liberally minded employer who is trying to preserve a racial balance in the interests of harmony, and at the same time is trying to produce a situation where the illiberal are protected, then one has got to get somebody to decide what is on one side of the line and what is on the other.
  The whole argument is really about to whom one gives that discretion. I have always said that it is wrong to give it to the courts. They form completely the wrong body, and I am equally against giving it to the employers. They are not the people who should have it, and when we have deliberately set up enforcement machinery, with experts in
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  this field to serve it, then why on earth cannot the discretion be given to them? Why, in heaven's name, should not the Race Relations Board be allowed to say on which side of the line it thinks any given action falls? They are the people who should assess the discretion, but I am not very surprised that the Government have not been able to accept that rather obvious principle.
  If the Government cannot accept it, then can we at least be told that in the Clause through which it is attempted to write into the Bill what the court should take into consideration, there should at least be the rudimentary reasons for giving a certificate? Just to say that this does not matter because it applies only to first generation immigrants is really the biggest nonsense. This is a licence to an employer to discriminate on the ground that he believes he has a certain racial balance which he wants to preserve; and if he believes it is necessary to discriminate, does anybody really say that circumstances will change because the first generation employee was born in England rather than elsewhere?
  If one believes that there are racial differences, then they will remain whether the man was born here or not. Let us forget what the C.B.I. and others have said about this matter of where the man was born. As I have already said, this is a licence to discriminate and the Race Relations Board should be allowed to come in and have the power to say that this should be dealt with at the earliest possible moment.
  Mr. Hattersley: My hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) told the House on several occasions that the existence of this Clause, in its present form, gives employers a licence to discriminate. It is a good, ringing, attractive phrase, the sort of phrase that, I am sure, makes enjoyable reading in the national Press. [An HON. MEMBER: "It happens to be true."] It is, however, wildly wrong, as applied to this Bill. I have to tell my hon. Friends that I believe, and I say this in all humility and good faith, that it might have been easier had the discussion on this Clause been conducted on the not unreasonable assumption that the Government were acting in the same sort of good faith as is written into the Clause.

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  I do not minimise the feelings of my hon. Friends, nor do I minimise the importance of seeking to specify, clearly and properly, the way in which a racial balance is determined. I understand many of their doubts. I concede immediately that the concept of racial balance is a notion against which it is possible to advance formidable arguments. I should be dishonest were I not to accept and concede that.
  On the other hand, even stronger arguments can be advanced in favour of this concept. Those strong arguments are made relevant and meaningful if we have a legitimate, proper and reasonable way of determining when the argument for racial balance can be applied to the work situation. The arguments in its favour are reasonable because, in the interests of the immigrants already here, and those likely to enter the country, it is important that they should be encouraged to take their place in a genuine cross-section of industry, that they should be spread throughout industry, and that we should avoid some jobs becoming immigrant jobs, becoming thought of as "black" jobs. That is not in the interests of the immigrants or industry.
  All we seek to do in this Clause is to make sure that that situation does not arise. I hope that it is some consolation to my hon. Friends to know that my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the First Secretary accept entirely that if this Clause is to work at all tolerably, "reasonable balance" has to be interpreted so as to facilitate integration, to avoid the difficulties involved in immigrant jobs, rather than to allow —and this is another emotive phrase, but a totally accurate one—the employer with malicious or frivolous intent to drive a coach and horses through the Bill.
  I can only explain the weaknesses of the arguments of some of my hon. Friends if I remind them of the processes which must be undertaken if the racial balance criteria, or the racial balance conception, is to be applied. If I know of a company which has intentionally and overtly discriminated against an immigrant in employment—and I have some experience of constituencies in which immigrants are to be found—the advice that I would give that immigrant would be to process
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  his complaint, as he is entitled to do under the Bill.
  If an immigrant is turned down when applying for employment by the man at the gate, or the personnel officer, or whoever is responsible for employment, and told that he has been turned down not because that company was opposed to the employment of immigrants, but because it believed in a racial balance, and already employed a suitably high proportion of immigrants, then he would be entitled to make a complaint under the provisions of the Bill. He would, I hope, in the first instance, make that complaint to the voluntary machinery set up in the industry. I believe that the integration of immigrants into industrial life makes it important for the Government to bring in no measures, and to advance no principles that dissociate them from trade union and other normal principles.
  I hope that the first thing that the immigrant would do would be to make a complaint to the voluntary machinery. If that failed, or if he were dissatisfied, that complaint would automatically go to the Race Relations Board. If the immigrant is dissatisfied by the decision handed to him by the voluntary machinery, it would be the Race Relations Board which would determine whether a company was reasonable in applying the racial balance Clause.
  Mr. Richard: No.
  Mr. Hattersley: My hon. Friend says "No". Let me put to him the situation in which the Race Relations Board says "Yes, indeed, the firm was right in applying the racial balance argument here and there is no case to answer." Then the matter would be determined by the Board and would not go any further. Then the determination would be entirely in the hands of the Race Relations Board.
  The case to which my hon. Friend refers and to which he takes exception is when the Race Relations Board says, "This company was not entitled to apply the racial balance argument and it should have accepted this man for employment" and the firm says "We believe the Race Relations Board is wrong, and we are not prepared to accept its adjudication." In that case, I think, my hon. Friend says that the Race Relations Board is in a position where it can only process the

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  complaint a stage further and take it to the court, and that it must be the court which decides whether the Race Relations Board's judgment was right or whether the judgment of the firm was right.
  Surely my hon. Friend is not suggesting that the Race Relations Board, which will be responsible for processing the complaint to the court if necessary, should not only take the case to court but should also, before the case gets to court, determine whether or not the case was proved?
  Mr. Rose: My hon. Friend consistently and throughout the debate has failed to take the point that what we are questioning is the matter of bona fide intention. The Race Relations Board does not have to decide whether it is reasonable or not, but has to decide merely whether the employer had a bona fide intention, although the result may be alien to what the Bill intends to deal with. It has to apply a purely subjective test of the employer's intention. Will my hon. Friend deal with that?
  Mr. Hattersley: Yes, I will deal with it. The Clause puts on the Race Relations Board a number of obligations and specifies a number of criteria that the Board must take into account. To abstract one of those and say that this is the only one that matters, that this is the only one which is crucial and, to adopt my hon. Friend's phrase, that this is the one which will enable a coach and horses to be driven through the Bill, is a misunderstanding of the criteria which, according to this Clause, limit and define the action which the Race Relations Board can take. The only dispute between my hon. Friends and myself—
  Dr. Winstanley: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point, may I put this to him? He has explained very clearly that a person would have a right to complain to the Race Relations Board if he had been told that he could not be employed because the firm wished to maintain a racial balance and that it was already employing enough coloured people. But suppose that an applicant was told, not that it was wished to preserve a racial balance, but that his education was deficient. He would not have the right to complain to the Race Relations Board. Therefore, this provision would not be needed at all.
  Mr. Hattersley: The hon. Gentleman is confusing the issue. If an applicant for employment is told that he is rejected not because of his race or ethnic origin but because of some industrial or educational deficiency, one is confronted with the problem of deciding whether the defence is legitimate or bogus. But that is hardly the issue with which we are concerned now. What we are concerned with is whether or not the Race Relations Board should be asked to give a judgment before the racial balance Clause is invoked, or after.
  To say that a company cannot apply this rule until it possesses a certificate of exemption is asking for the rule to be applied in an intolerably inflexible way. It is asking for a certificate of exemption which would have to last for a period of time during which circumstances and employment patterns might change. It is asking for rigidity which is unacceptable and it misunderstands the way in which people employ individuals. It is making it impossible for the voluntary machinery to work, and it is asking for arbitrary and inflexible decisions to be taken.
  All I am asking—and this is why I referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court with unacceptable severity at the beginning of my speech, for which I humbly apologise—is the understanding that the Government seek to meet the problem and solve the difficulty—not to reduce the force of the Bill but to meet a problem of the immigrant community. We seek to do it in the most flexible or reasonable way, and we believe that as the Bill stands, it does that as well as it can be done.
  12.45 a.m.
  Sir D. Renton: Since about midnight, we on this side have listened quietly, patiently and not without interest to the sort of clash which is inescapable in the party opposite between the Left-wing intellectuals as represented by the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) and the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) —
  Mr. Richard: On a point of order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should speak from more knowledge of this party before he makes allegations like that.
  Sir D. Renton: I shall not be deterred by that intervention from drawing this

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  just and necessary comparison. We have heard the Left-wing intellectuals, on the one hand, clashing with the practical trade unionists as represented by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) and, I am glad to say, on this occasion, supported by the Government representative.
  I fully endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said. I might make so bold as to add to his reply that if one reads carefully the last Report of the Race Relations Board, and particularly paragraph 48, one sees that the Board does not envisage having to do the kind of work which the hon. Member for Black-ley would like to impose upon it. Indeed, the Board has a cautionary phrase or two which make it clear that it would not be qualified to do so.
  The Board states:
  "If it is important to secure the confidence of members of minority groups, it is no less important to win the confidence of those who may find themselves in a position to discriminate. This means that the Board, its staff and its committees, must be properly qualified to carry out their duties."
  When one thinks of the kind of duties that would have to be performed and the sort of staff, and the enormous numbers of staff, who would be needed to carry out the duty of giving the prior approval of the Board as mentioned in Amendment No. 54, one realises that the hon. Member's proposal is quite impractical, quite apart from being undesirable for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Walton and for the powerful reason taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Eldon Griffiths) when he pointed out that the men on the shop floor, in consultation with management, can probably reach the right sort of preliminary decisions much better than anyone from outside and that if anything went wrong, or anyone feels that he has a complaint, there is opportunity to go to the Board.
  The Under-Secretary is quite right about this, more especially when one bears in mind, as my hon. Friend pointed out, that subsection (4) of Clause 8 means that in any event the Clause is applicable only to first-generation immigrants.
  The hon. Member for Blackley called the Clause the most offensive part of the Bill. It is unthinkable that we should
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  legislate in this field without having something on the lines of the reasonable balance Clause, difficult of definition though that becomes. We must face that.
  We went into this matter in Committee. We made various suggestions to the Government. They have not put down Amendments which improve the position, and it may be that it is difficult to find the right phraseology. As I say, however, it is unthinkable that we should be without something like this provision, and I am glad that the Under-Secretary has, on this occasion, stuck to his guns.
  Amendment negatived.
  Mr. Hattersley: I beg to move, Amendment No. 57, in page 5, line 23, leave out 'and (3)' and insert 'to (4)'.
  This is, I trust, an uncontentious Amendment. It merely seeks to add the right phrase rather than the wrong phrase. It intends that the powers we seek should be extended to cover the right subsections rather than the wrong subsections. It is entirely a correction, and I hope that the House will accept it in these terms.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendment made: No. 58, in page 5, line 28, leave out 'in or'.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
  Mr. Ennals: I beg to move Amendment No. 63, in page 6, line 11, at end insert:
  (12) For the purposes of this section British territorial waters shall be treated as part of Great Britain.
  Certain parts of Clause 8 deal with ships at sea and aircraft, and in Committee it was suggested that the Parliamentary draftsman had overlooked territorial waters. The point was raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton). The Secretary of State said that he would look at the question. The Amendment, which removes any doubt that British territorial waters are to be treated as part of Great Britain, gives effect to that undertaking. Its practical effect will be minimal.
  Sir D. Renton: While thanking the hon. Gentleman for this Amendment, may I express the hope that the Government will never again forget that Great

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  Britain is an island entirely surrounded by territorial waters?
  Mr. Hogg: On a point of order. I know that hon. Friends of mine, and I dare say hon. Members opposite, have their own arrangements to make. Perhaps the Government would say one way or the other—I am not anxious to dictate to them in any way—what are their intensions about the progress of the Bill. I do not want to move a dilatory Motion, although I would do so to put myself in order if we wanted a discussion. I do not want a discussion, but I think hon. Members ought to know exactly what the intention of the Government is.
  Mr. Callaghan: Further to that point of order, if this is a proper way of doing it. There is only one major Amendment left, namely, on damages, as I understand it, and it therefore should be possible to get through Report stage quickly and proceed to Third Reading, so that the Bill may be transferred to another place reasonably quickly so that it may be considered before the Summer Recess.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Mr. Hattersley: I beg to move, Amendment No. 64, in page 6, line 11, at end insert:
  (12) Section 3 above shall not render unlawful the selection of a person of a particular nationality or particular descent for employment requiring attributes especially possessed by persons of that nationality or descent.
  The Amendment seeks to meet an assurance given to the Committee that we would seek to remedy a situation in which quite unreasonable powers might be applied by the Bill. The Government accept that it is reasonable, to take a perhaps banal but obvious example, for an Indian restaurant to wish to employ Indian waiters and only Indian waiters, and to prevent them from doing that might be taking the principles of the Bill outside the bounds of reason.
  I make the speech only to assure the House that the Clause is worded in such a way as to make it as near impossible as can be done for people to misuse the Clause and extend its powers over a wider sphere than the House would intend and regard as reasonable. I therefore commend the Amendment to the House on those principles.
  Mr. Hogg: I ought to say "Thank you" to the Under-Secretary on behalf of my hon. Friends and myself. This matter occupied quite a long time in Committee. I had to claim the assistance of the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Lestor) as a potential geisha girl, and we had to give a number of other highly commendable analogies and examples, but at least we made the Government see sense, and we are grateful to them for having seen it.
  Amendment agreed to.

Clause 9
  ACTS DONE FOR CHARITABLE PURPOSES
  Amendment made: No. 65, in page 6, line 12, leave out Clause 9.—[Mr. Callaghan.]
Clause 11

  INCITEMENT AND ACCESSORIES
  Mr. Callaghan: I beg to move Amendment 68, in page 6, line 27, leave out subsection (1).
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): I suggest that it would be convenient for the House to discuss at the same time the following Amendments: No. 69, in line 30 leave out from 'who' to 'an' in line 31 and insert:
  'deliberately aids, induces or incites another person to do'.
  and No. 79, in Clause 15, page 9, line 30, leave out from second 'of' to 'the' in line 31 and insert:
  'aiding, inducing or inciting'.
  Mr. Callaghan: I assure hon. Gentlemen opposite that I am prepared to accept all the insults, as long as I get the Amendments. It is always easy to swallow one if one can get the other.
  This series of Amendments represents a great concession and I hope that I will not be accused of weakening the whole purpose of the Bill. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) was very much opposed in Committee to the words
  "…aids, abets, counsels or procures…"
  and suggested that they should be replaced by an improved form of words. I have, therefore, substituted for that phrase the words
  "…deliberately aid, induces or incites another person."

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  I am sure that this represents a tremendous improvement in the Bill.
  Mr. Antony Buck: I am not certain that the right hon. Gentleman was speaking tongue in cheek, but this matter occupied us for some time in Committee. It is a good thing that he has broken with precedent in the form of words chosen. This represents a marginal improvement in the Bill and as the suggestion originally came from my hon. Friends, we are grateful for the Amendment.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendment made: No. 69, in line 30, leave out from 'who' to 'an' in line 31 and insert:
  'deliberately aids, induces or incites another person to do'.—[Mr. Callaghan.]

Clause 12

  LIABILITY OF EMPLOYERS, PRINCIPALS AND AGENTS
  Mr. Rose: I beg to move Amendment No. 70, in page 6, line 35, after 'treated', insert 'prima facie'.
  The purpose of this Amendment is dealt with in its essentials by the following Amendment standing in the name of the Home Secretary. For at least the second time tonight I find myself having tabled an Amendment in virtually the the same terms as the Government. While I make no apology for that, in view of the Government proposal in this matter, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendent, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. Ennals: I beg to move Amendment No. 71, in line 42, at end insert:
  (3) In proceedings brought under section 18 or 19 of this Act against any person in respect of an act alleged to have been done by an employee of his it shall be a defence for that person to prove that he took such steps as were reasonably practicable to prevent the employee from doing in the course of his employment acts of the same description as that act.
  I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Rose) for having withdrawn the previous Amendment.
  As he explained, this Amendment deals with the same subject. In Committee the right hon. and learned Member for
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  Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) expressed concern about the implications of subsection (2). He argued—and, like hon. Members generally, I agreed—that it was wrong that an employer who had taken all reasonable steps to prevent acts of discrimination by his employees should be held responsible for any acts of discrimination that might be carried out by his employees. I undertook to look at the matter between that stage and Report. After further consideration, we have decided that there is a case for making the defence of "all reasonable steps" available to an employer, and the Amendment gives clear effect to that decision.
  Sir D. Renton: Although an important Amendment, I can deal with it merely by thanking the hon. Gentleman and stressing that it means that the vicarious liability under the Bill will not be absolute and that there will be available the defence to which the hon. Gentleman referred. This is an important improvement in the Bill.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I, too, welcome the Amendment, which goes a long way towards meeting the points made in Committee, particularly from the point of view of the C.B.I.
  Does the Minister consider that the phrase "reasonably practicable" would be sufficient if, for example, an employer had made it clear, through notices placed in his workshops, to his employees that he was wholly opposed to racial discrimination and wished to subscribe in full to the purposes of the Bill?
  If a long-distance lorry driver employed by a firm engages at the end of a 100-mile journey—assuming that he will be allowed to travel 100 miles under the Transport Bill—in an act which could be regarded as discriminatory, would his employer be protected if he had made it clear to that driver that while in his employ he must not discriminate?
  1.0 a.m.
  Mr. Ennals: It would be first for the Board and later for a court to decide. A reasonable step for the employer to take would be to put up a notice making quite clear that he was against any form of discrimination. If an issue had arisen, he could do as was done in a recent case in Ontario where a circular was sent out to

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  all sections of a factory making known that the firm was against discrimination.
  Amendment agreed to.

Clause 14

  GENERAL PROVISION AS TO INVESTIGATION OF COMPLAINTS OF DISCRIMINATION
  Mr. Winnick: I beg to move Amendment No. 72, in page 8, line 3, leave out 'two' and insert 'six'.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this Amendment we can discuss Amendment No. 73, in line 3, leave out 'two' and insert 'three'.
  Mr. Winnick: The purpose of the Amendment is to extend the period for making complaints. I consider the present period too rigid. Coloured people who are new immigrants to Britain may not know the procedure. They may have a justified complaint regarding discrimination and not be told how to make the complaint until the two months period has passed. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Ennals) said that he had an open mind on the subject, so, if my Amendment is not acceptable, he may agree to a longer period than two months.
  If at the end of the day the Government stand completely firm on two months, would it be possible for the Race Relations Board to look at a complaint which is more than two months old? I would rather have a situation in which the period is longer—six months, or even four months—but if it is not possible for the Government to shift on this, as a compromise could the Board have power to look at complaints which are over two months old?
  Mr. Ennals: Any period we chose would be an arbitrary one. There was some consideration at one stage as to whether it should be one month and others suggested six months. The feeling of the Government and the Race Relations Board was that it should be relatively short—not so long that people would have forgotten the circumstances, but not so short as to make it difficult for busy people, or someone who had to make a journey outside the country, to make a complaint. Following discussions with the Board, which considered anything between one and three months reasonable, we thought two months about right.
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  I said in Committee that if I were under pressure I would not stand by two months, but there was not much pressure in Committee and my conclusion still is that two months is the right period. I cannot give the assurance for which my hon. Friend asked about the Board having power to extend the period if it wished. This was raised in Committee and it was felt that it would be putting the Board in a difficult situation. On what criteria should it decide to deal with a complaint which came three or four months later? It was thought better to have a firm rule and I think this is about right.
  Mr. John Lee: As my hon. Friend did not get much pressure for this in Committee, I hope that I can supply a little pressure now. In civil proceedings under the limitation Acts one has six years in which to mount an action. This is a similar procedure dealing with simpler matters. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Winnick) said, many of those who will raise these complaints will be unused to our proceedings and uncertain of their rights. Many of them will not be English-speakers. Often they will be working in a hostile environment. It is in just that situation that allegations are likely to be justified.
  Although I do not want to make too much of an issue of this, I think that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary should look at this again. Six months is not unreasonably long. It is not so long that people will forget what has happened, certainly not the complainants. My hon. Friend's reply was disappointing.
  Sir S. Summers: If pressure is to be mounted on the Minister to change his mind from the intention which he announced a few minutes ago, namely, two months, perhaps a brief intervention to support him would not be unwelcome to the Government Front Bench. If a genuine complaint cannot be started on its journey to the conciliation machinery within two months of the incident, it cannot be a very genuine complaint. I hope that the Minister will not change his mind but will stick to two months.
  Dr. Miller: I want to lend support to those who suggest that the period should be longer. Last Saturday a young woman of West Indian origin came to see me at my political surgery about an alleged

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  discrimination with regard to housing. She was a highly intelligent young woman, yet she did not know that there existed in Scotland a local conciliation committee of the Board. One could well envisage a situation in which many immigrants, who obviously do not want to cause trouble and have no intention of being difficult, would not know of the facilities until the two months had elapsed. Two months is not a long time. I ask my hon. Friend to give serious consideration to extending the period considerably.
  Mr. Kenneth Lewis: In replying to the debate on an Amendment to Clause 8(2) the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity said nothing about complaints made to the Ministry. Schedule 2 sets out procedure whereby complaints can be put to the Ministry. They can be put to a body set up by the Ministry before they reach the Board. How would this affect the two months period? If the matter has not reached the Board, further time would be required.
  Mr. Ennals: The two-month period applies to wherever the complaint is registered, whether with the Board, or through the Board, or direct to the voluntary machinery. We have looked at this issue very carefully. There has been a good deal of pressure directed to our having a system which enables complaints to be dealt with quickly. If the period from when the alleged discrimination took place to when the complaint is made to the Board is extended, conciliation is thus postponed. If rapid conciliation is desired, we must try to bring about a rapid reporting of complaints. Responding to the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers), I do not intend to change my mind.
  Sir S. Summers: My point arises out of what the hon. Gentleman has just said. As I understood him, the two months starts from the time the complaint reaches either the Race Relations Board or the voluntary machinery. It follows, therefore, that if the complaint is sent to the Ministry in the first place and is delayed unreasonably in the Ministy and does not reach its destination within two months, the complainant will have forfeited his right to carry out
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  the complaint. Surely it is when the complaint reaches the Ministry that the time should start.
  Mr. Ennals: The time is the time at which the complaint is registered, whether it is formally registered with the Race Relations Board or is formally registered with the Ministry. The important thing is that the period should be not less than two months after the alleged discrimination has taken place.
  Amendment negatived.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Sydney Irving): The next Amendment is No. 74, with which we may discuss Government Amendment No. 95.
  Mr. Ennals: I beg to move, Amendment No. 74, in page 8, line 3, after 'and' insert:
  'it is accompanied by the name and address of the person by whom it is made and'.
  This can be dealt with very quickly. It is to carry out an assurance I gave to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) who, in Committee, proposed an Amendment requiring the complainant to give his name and address. This is what the Amendment seeks to do.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendments made: No. 75, in page 8, line 22, leave out from 'that' to end of line 23 and insert
  'the act was one of discrimination against a particular person'.
  No. 76, in line 31, leave out from 'of to 'shall' in line 33 and insert 'any other complaint'.—[Mr. Ennals.]

Clause 15

  INVESTIGATION OF COMPLAINTS RELATING TO EMPLOYMENT, TRADE UNIONS AND ORGANISATIONS OF EMPLOYERS
  Mr. Winnick: I beg to move, Amendment No. 78, in page 9, line 24, to leave out
  'the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity'.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this Amendment we can also discuss the following Amendments: No. 80, in page 9, line 45, leave out 'to the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity'.

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  No. 96, in page 20, line 28 leave out from 'authorisation' to end of line 31.
  No. 97, in line 32, leave out paragraph 2 and insert—
  2. Where any such complaint is made it shall at first instance be referred to the Race Relations Board, and the Board shall decide if the complaint should be sent to a body of persons suitable to consider that complaint.
  No. 100, in page 21, line 10, leave out paragraph 4 and insert—
  4. A body of persons to whom a complaint is referred under this Schedule shall, on the expiration of the period of four weeks from the reference of the complaint to them or on completion of their investigation, whichever occurs first, report to the Race Relations Board on their findings and whether they have been able: to secure a settlement and assurance.
  No. 101, in line 19, leave out paragraph 5 and insert—
  5. The Board shall decide if the agreement is satisfactory where such an agreement has been reached with a complaint and if they are not satisfied to investigate themselves. Where no settlement has been reached by a body of persons outside the Board the Board will then decide whether to investigate the matter.
  No. 102, in line 28, leave out paragraphs 6 to 16.
  Mr. Winnick: What I am trying to do by the Amendment is to make sure that employment complaints are treated in the same way as housing and credit complaints; in other words, I should like complaints to go direct to the Race Relations Board. I cannot see any justification at all for the Department of Employment and Productivity being involved. Indeed, if anything, one would imagine that the Department has enough problems on its plate at the present without being involved with complaints about racial or colour discrimination.
  Some people have argued, I do not know with what justification, that the Government have included the involvement of the Department as a sort of sop to the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. I would make the point, which has been made earlier today, that the T.U.C. and the C.B.I. have not been very keen, certainly not been very enthusiastic, about the Measure we are debating. They have been urging that voluntary machinery should be used in industry, and that there is no need for what we are now discussing. Therefore, perhaps the Government fell it only right and proper that the Department of Employment and Pro-
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  ductivity, the former Ministry of Labour, should be involved at some stage. I believe this to be totally unnecessary.
  What I would urge is that complaints should be sent to the Race Relations Board which would then decide if there is appropriate voluntary machinery to be used in a given industry. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) seems to be heckling me from a sitting position. No doubt he can make his own views clear later on.
  Mr. Hogg: I was taking no part in the hon. Gentleman's speech. I was giving instruction and advice and comfort to my hon. Friends.
  1.15 a.m.
  Mr. Winnick: I should be the last person to intervene in the internal affairs of the Conservative Party.
  If complaints about employment went to the Board it would decide if there was a voluntary machinery in the industry. If such machinery exists there is no reason why the Board will not use it. Why use the Department of Employment and Productivity rather like a letter box?
  It seems to me that we are doing so because the Government want to give a sop to the C.B.I. and the T.U.C. There is no difficulty over housing and credit facilities; complaints will go direct to the Board. I urge the Government to reconsider their decision over employment, and to keep out the Department of Employment and Productivity, which has enough problems. Complaints should go to the Race Relations Board in the first place.
  Mr. Callaghan: The Amendments were considered in Committee, and the Committee resisted them. I have seen no reason and heard no new argument to make me change my mind about them at this stage.
  I do not think that it would be right to give the Race Relations Board power to overturn settlements accepted by both parties to a complaint, as the Amendments would do. On that ground alone I resist them.
  Moreover, it is a basic feature of the Bill that it gives industry a chance to settle employment complaints by its own

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  efforts where it has suitable machinery. If this system is to operate there must be some authority with the task of deciding whether, in relation to any particular complaint, suitable industrial machinery exists. It would be frivolous to give that sort of decision to the Board. It is clearly the responsibility of the Department of Employment and Productivity, the old Ministry of Labour, to decide whether suitable machinery exists. It has long-standing knowledge of industrial relations, procedures and close links with industrial machinery at all levels, closer than anybody else has. No serious critic or observer of the Bill could suggest that there is any authority better fitted to make these decisions.
  With regret, I cannot accept my hon. Friend's Amendment.
  Sir S. Summers: The Government are making a profound mistake in seeking to keep in the Department of Employment and Productivity. The Amendment is entirely right. For one thing, to introduce this additional wheel to the coach will only make it easier for delays to occur.
  Even more important, the Bill's whole success, notably in employment, depends on the skill of the conciliation machinery and the confidence placed in it. That confidence will depend very largely on the extent to which the public, particularly complainants, regard the Race Relations Board as independent of the Government of the day. That is particularly so should there be complaints about employment in the public service or the nationalised industries. If the complainant in such circumstances doubts the independence of the conciliation machinery because the Department of Employment and Productivity is involved in its whole administration a very serious defect will arise, and lack of confidence will follow.
  To the best of my information, those concerned with the conciliation machinery very much regret the Government's attitude in this matter. Experience will show that a mistake has been made if the Government stick to this. I hope that we shall make a change here in the not too distant future when we have a chance to make changes. I am sure that in the long run this additional responsibility
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  placed on the Department cannot do anybody any good. In column 664 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of our Committee proceedings on 20th June the Minister's view was set out quite clearly that the Department did not want to be involved. If they are going to be nothing but a postbox it can do nobody any good and can only lead to delay.
  Mr. Callaghan: I do not wish to repeat my argument, except to say that the hon. Gentleman cannot have heard me clearly. There must be someone to determine whether the appropriate machinery exists—
  Mr. John Lee: The Race Relations Board.
  Mr. Callaghan: My hon. Friend interjects "the Race Relations Board", but I can think of few things that would lead to greater lack of confidence than that it should be put into the hands of those who are without experience in these matters. It should be the Department of Employment and Productivity—the old Ministry of Labour—which has got the experience to decide whether this machinery exists.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I am quite sure the Home Secretary is right in this matter, but I hope he can urge on his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity that if the Department is going to deal with these matters it should do so reasonably expeditiously.
  Since there are many other labours on the shoulders of the Secretary of State at the moment, I hope he will say to her that it is important she should deal with complaints of this kind more rapidly than she is able to deal with letters from hon. Members, which certainly takes a very long time.
  Mr. Kenneth Lewis: There are a good many of us who have considerable reservations about the Department of Employment and Productivity being involved in this field. I found it extremely interesting —and I tried to intervene when we were discussing the previous Amendment—that when the Under-Secretary for the Department spoke about the Race Relations Board and its responsibility in regard to complaints, he never once mentioned his own responsibility and the Departmental

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  activities that would flow from this Bill once it was passed by the House. Yet many of the complaints will undoubtedly come to his Ministry before ever they reach the Board, and one would hope that in so far as they go to the Department they will stop there and will not go on to the Board.
  What some of us find puzzling about this is that assuming there were difficulties of employment in this field, and that there was no Bill of this kind, then clearly the matter would be discussed in the usual way as between the trade unions and the employers, or as between an individual trade unionist and his trade union, and would eventually go through the normal processes and might eventually be settled on a national or at a local level through the good offices of the Department of Employment and Productivity. This would happen in any case, and what we cannot understand is why they should be involved in this Bill. It seems to us necessary to bring in the Race Relations Board only at the end of the day, and if this is so, then the processes involving the old Ministry of Labour conciliation machinery would happen in any case, and it is quite unnecessary to write them into this Bill.
  Amendment negatived.
  Amendment made: In page 9, line 30, leave out from second 'of' to 'the' in line 31 and insert 'aiding, inducing or inciting'.—[Mr. Callaghan.]

Clause 18

  NATURE OF PROCEEDINGS IN ENGLAND AND WALES
  Mr. Hogg: I beg to move Amendment No. 81, in page 10, leave out lines 29 to 32.
  The Deputy Speaker: With this Amendment we can discuss Amendment No. 86.
  Mr. Hogg: As you have said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, this Amendment goes with Amendment No. 86, which is really a corollary to it. It raises a bone of contention between the parties which was discussed first on Second Reading and which occupied the Committee for a certain amount of time. I deployed the case at considerable length in Committee and do not want to detain the House
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  for the same length of time now, but it is a matter to which my hon. Friends and I attach a certain amount of importance, and, therefore, I shall deploy the case shortly so that hon. Members who were not on the Committee may understand how we feel.
  Those who are concerned with the desire to remedy a wrong created by discrimination are concerned also that there should be an individual remedy. Although I am not sure that it would have applied to everybody, I was always prepared to compromise on the basis of out-of-pocket expenses. The Attorney-General, who is paying his usual courteous attention to what is said, will remember that I proposed a separate Amendment on that in Committee, and it would always have been acceptable to me, although it was a minor matter.
  But what we have to consider is the remedy proposed by way of damages in Clause 18, to which Amendment 81 refers, and Clause 21, to which Amendment 86 refers. The first thing I would say to hon. Members opposite, which I ventured to say in Committee, is that they, too, recognise, although in somewhat different fields, that there may be cases of injustice where the provision of a remedy by way of damages is inappropriate and cases of very serious injustice which can yield serious financial loss. Less than three years ago, at about the same time as the first Act on the subject of race relations was being passed through this House, hon. Members opposite insisted on driving through this House a Measure designed to reverse the decision of the courts in the well-known case of Rookes v. Barnard in which the courts had found that damages of several thousands of£s yielded to a person who had suffered by reason of intimidation.
  We did not agree with that, but the argument which existed between the two sides of the House then, as it was presented to us from the other side, was that, although a wrong might exist in legislation dealing with social conditions, it was not desirable that a remedy by way of damages should adhere to it. We did not agree then. It may be that they will not agree with us now. At any rate, they will not pretend, therefore, that in saying that, although there may be a wrong of some kind, as we do, the

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  remedy of damages should not adhere to it, we are asserting something which is wholly foreign to their way of thinking, because it is not.
  The substantial question before the House is whether it is desirable to attach to an individual who complains of an act of discrimination—one must remember in this connection that a single act is enough to give rise to a complaint under the current Bill—a remedy by way of damages for compensation for the loss of chance of employment. In this connection it is important to understand what it is that the Government propose. They have never pretended—and we have never sought to pretend either, of course—that a person who applies for a job or a person who applies for a house should be able to compel a prospective employer to give him that job or the seller to give him that house. That is common ground between the two sides. It is because shot gun marriages of this kind would be bound to yield nothing but bitterness and hatred, and both sides wish to avoid it.
  1.30 a.m.
  It follows, therefore, that when someone applies for a job or a house but does not get it because the other party to the proposed arrangement discriminates against him on ground of race, he is not being deprived of that job or house by way of damage but is being deprived of a much more notional conception—the right to compete for it with other persons, it may be of his own race or colour or of some other race or some other colour. Such a right is not so much of an artificial character, because it could be enforced by assurance, declaration, injunction or conciliation, but a right of such doubtful character as regards money that to attempt to quantify it in terms of money is of necessity purely speculative.
  I recognise that there are fields of law where judges are compelled to make somewhat similar calculations. Where a man is injured as a result of an accident, he is deprived not merely of employment but of his chances of getting some future employment. When a woman loses her husband, a great deal of resentment is caused because the courts have felt bound to speculate on her chances of remarriage, and this is translated by an act of arbitrary calculus into£s shillings
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  and pence. This circumstance has given rise to reasonable resentment and has been embarrassing to those taking part in the proceedings. In actions for breach of contract, there are fringe benefits attached —sometimes a share of profits or chances of future promotion—which enter into the calculations of damage.
  Although I have never like it or welcomed it, although on the whole I think it a highly embarrassing and difficult calculation, it is something which the law probably has to accept as the lesser of two evils. But when I am asked in this novel and wholly uncharted field of legislation to introduce a right of general damages which are not general damages by reference to any ascertainable amount but to a purely abstract conception of what the chances of competing with an unknown number of potential competitors of different race, colour and language might be, I shrink from the calculation. It is pure speculation.
  So the first proposition is that it is doubtful whether one could right such a wrong by way of damages and the second is that the damages themselves would be highly speculative. The third factor, as those of us which have been at the Bar a long time know, is that we have gradually moved in the legal profession away from speculative actions. When the Attorney-General and I went first to the Bar, many years ago, the ambulance chaser was a reality. He was a social menace. In those days we did not know how to get rid of him, but we have got rid of him by way of the process of legal aid and we are all very glad to have done so.
  But a claim for damages, even in the county court—and at the moment these proceedings are to be in the county court —is a weapon of oppression against a person of moderate means, and I do not believe that, except where necessity demands it, it is a desirable thing to introduce into our legal system. I am sure that all hon. Members, whether they ultimately accept the Amendment or not, will have a certain sympathy with me when I say that it is a weapon of oppression. It is used as an instrument of blackmail; it is used as a means of extracting money in support of frivolous complaints, and it is undesirable.

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  I am sorry to take a little time about this, but I attach importance to it and it is a little more complicated than would seem at first sight and were I to try to oversimplify it, I should not be doing my duty to my own side, or to the House as a whole.
  It is said in answer to this, and there is a certain measure of sense in it—I do not want to underestimate the case on the other side—that in this instance the potential target for speculative actions is fully safeguarded, because there is a provision in the Bill that these race relations proceedings can be initiated not by the complainant himself, but only by the Race Relations Board, which will have had a preliminary investigation. I concede that that is an important safeguard and it would be wholly unjustified for me not to recognise the force of that answer.
  But my reply to it is that it is fundamentally a nonsense within a nonsense. Having arrived at a wholly irrational remedy, the Government realise that it is so oppressive that it cannot be applied, and they therefore arrive at a protection which in itself is an affront to almost every established principle of law. Let me establish why I say that.
  When a man is entitled to damages, it may be for libel, it may be for breach of promise of marriage, it may be for a motor accident, he brings the action himself. He brings it on his own behalf and if he wins, he gets damages, and that is either right or wrong according to what is thought of the type of action which he brings. But in this instance it is not open to him to bring an action. The remedy is not his. It is operated at the whim—I do not say that in an offensive way;"discretion" may be the more appropriate word—of a public body.
  That would be all right if the only thing which the public body had to consider was the complainant's interest. If it were simply proceeding for the complainant, if its natural interest were to consider justice and the complainant's interest, there might be something in it;but that is not so. The interest of the Board is quite different from that of the complainant and might diverge from it
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  and might diverge from it on the absolutely critical question of whether to apply for an action for damages.
  The Board's interest is the public interest of creating a set of social conditions. Its prime interest is conciliation. Its secondary interest is a satisfactory assurance for the future. It is only when those two things break down that it asks for damages. It then asks for damages which belong not to the Board, but to the complainant. It therefore becomes a complete matter of chance whether an individual complainant gets any damages.
  Quite properly influenced by its public duty, the Board may or may not proceed and, although the complainant's interest may be one factor which enters into the Board's calculations, it will not be the predominant factor, nor the only factor. The result is that the Bill will propose that a right of damages, in itself highly speculative and difficult of calculation and which may be used as an instrument of oppression against the other party, will become operated by a third party and that a public body which, in the nature of things, must be animated not by a desire for justice between the potential complainant and the potential defendant, but by whether it has achieved a public purpose which is separate from either of them.
  This is fundamentally a nonsense within a nonsense, and I would come back—although I apologise first for having taken a length of time at this hour—to a proposition which I advanced on the Second Reading of this Bill because I believe that it is the true philosophy which should underlie proceedings of this kind.
  I do not always agree with what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) has to say, but I fully agree with something which he said on the Second Reading, namely, that this particular remedy by way of damages is an alien body from the American code. That code encourages complaints because the legal system in the United States depends upon the individual complaint with the complainant acting, as it were, as a common informer for that against which the law is aimed. This serves no purpose in this Bill because we have handed the

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  initiative to initiate complaints before a court to a public body, the Race Relations Board. That is a public body, disinterested in profit, and acting in the public interest. That is right. The Race Relations Board already exists and fulfils an important public function under the terms of the 1965 Act.
  In that Act, there is no right to pursue a claim for damages for oneself or for anybody else and it operates by way of injunction, by way of assurance, and by way of conciliation. This is a retrogressive step and something imported from a foreign code which serves no useful purpose and creates at the same time a number of anomalies both by way of application and by way of initiation.
  The true philosophy is surely what I tried to make clear during the Second Reading of the Bill, namely, that we are working in a novel field of public law and that it is not right to create a statutory tort. The 1965 Act did not do so, and neither that Act nor this Bill have created a criminal offence. May I put it this way? What we are doing is to set up something akin to the Restrictive Practices Court, to which the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) has referred me. It is an analogy for what this legislation is trying to bring about—something in the nature of the resale price maintenance legislation. A characteristic of this new branch of public law is that one does not create a criminal offence with an individual remedy attaching to a complainant, but attach an enforcement apparatus, the purpose of which is not to obtain damages but to enforce an acceptable set of social conditions.
  I apologise again for speaking at length at this hour of the morning, but I am trying to put the serious argument that what is here proposed is a retrogressive step. It adds complications to the Bill. On occasions it will be used as an instrument of speculation and oppression. It adds an element of uncertainty where uncertainty is undesirable, and it will tend, on occasions, to create antagonism between person and person, when the object of the Bill is to create a set of social conditions where antagonism does not exist. I have said
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  all I wanted to say. I hope that I have presented my case in an orderly and rational way.
  1.45 a.m.
  The Attorney-General: It may be convenient if I were to say at an early stage in this discussion what are the Government's reasons for recommending that the Amendment should be rejected. As the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) has said in a moderate, and if I may say so, ingenious speech, the effect of the Amendment would be to eliminate the provisions of damages altogether.
  On this side of the House we think that it is appropriate and imperative that there should be room for an ultimate award of damages, in appropriate cases arising under the Bill, to those whom it can be shown have suffered loss, but that the damages should be limited to the headings indicated in Clause 21(l)(a) and (1)(b). I say that there should be room for an ultimate award of damages because I am sure that the House will appreciate that the question of damages will arise only in a limited number of cases, at the end of a very long process.
  The process will start with the complaint by the person discriminated against. That complaint will be considered by the conciliation committee, and if the attempt at conciliation fails, it will be reported to the Race Relations Board. In turn the Board will no doubt attempt to settle the matter by negotiation. If that also fails, it will fall to the Board, in appropriate cases, to go to court, and I can imagine that it would take only the clearest cases to court.
  It will be at that stage that the question of suing for damages will arise and that issue will fall for determination by a county court judge, sitting with two assessors. It seems to us that, if at the end of that process the victim who has suffered loss through discrimination is to get nothing, he will feel that the provisions of the Bill are mere humbug. This is the real danger in the right hon. and learned Gentleman's proposal. The House will remember that although it is true that Clause 18 provides other remedies against discrimination, injunction and declaration and a combination of injunction and damages, in the single act of discrimination, damages will be the

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  only remedy. I emphasise that the damages recoverable at the end of that long process are limited. There is no room for exemplary damages or punitive damages, of the kind common in the law of tort. They are rewardable on the occasion of defamation or malicious prosecution, assault or even negligence and nuisance. There is no room for that kind of head of claim for damages under the Bill, no solatium for wounded feelings, no penal damages to punish a discriminator who may have acted outrageously and in aggravating conditions in a given case. The reason why the Government took that view and limited the horizon of damages is that the main essential purpose of the Bill is conciliation, the avoidance and elimination of racial discrimination. It is not the intention to encourage an onset of litigation. The damages recoverable are strictly limited under the Bill, to compensate the victim for the loss that he has suffered.
  Mr. John Lee Mr. John Lee rose—
  The Attorney-General: I should like to develop this point. I will resume my seat in a moment.
  In the situations covered by the Bill, the loss the victim suffers by reason of the act of discrimination is essentially the loss of the opportunity of obtaining the benefit, be it a house or a job or any other facility which he is seeking, and we on this side of the House take the view that it is reasonable that where the Board can prove that he might reasonably be expected to have obtained or retained the benefit but for the act of discrimination, the court should have power to award such damages as it thinks just, for loss of opportunity.
  We also think—and I gathered from the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he was disposed to go as far with us on this road as this—that he ought to recover his special damages for fares that he has incurred, for surveyor's fees that have been wasted and matters of that kind as an additional factor.
  Mr. John Lee: The question that I want to ask my right hon. and learned Friend is this. Are the damages limited as in the county court limitation?
  The Attorney-General: No, they are not limited as in county court jurisdiction. But frankly, I think it will be a
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  very rare case indeed where the damages awarded would exceed that limit. I imagine that they would be on a very much lower level.
  The right hon. and learned Gentleman has pointed out, as indeed is the case, that ascertainment of damages will be difficult, that, as he has characteristically and fairly pointed out, that is not an unusual situation arising in the courts. A court, doing the best that can be done with insufficient material, may have to form conclusions on matters on which there is no evidence and make allowances for contingencies even to the extent of making a pure guess. That is happening in the courts day in and day out. This is a common occurrence, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has indicated, in claims made, for example, in respect of pain and suffering or loss of expectation of life—almost metaphysical concepts that have got to be translated into terms of pounds, shillings and pence.
  There is a claim for damages for loss of a chance of winning a prize. There was the case of Chaplin v. Hicks and the actress who was eliminated from the final elimination contest for selecting actresses for a part. The assessment of damages for loss of a chance of winning a prize is difficult, but the courts have faced the difficulty and have done their best with it. So that there is no insurmountable problem here that the experience and skill of learned judges cannot cope with.
  Then the novelty of the claim, the creation of this new statutory wrong, whatever we call it, this new statutory duty, is in keeping with the development of our law. Whether this is a tort or a quasi-tort, or by whatever technical term one likes to describe it, the fact is that the history of the law of tort—this is not my language but language of a far more eminent legal source—is studded with new causes of action, both judge-made causes and statutory new causes of action. New problems and new changes in society demand new rights and remedies in the courts. The challenge that our contemporary society faces by racial discrimination and the threat which it provides to the order of society make necessary the new remedies that the Bill provides.

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  The final matter which worried the right hon. and learned Gentleman was the risk that the provision of this new cause of action, this new basis for claims of damages, might result in a flood of speculative cases. He readily provided the answer to that fear by pointing out that the individual has no right to sue. The Government have been under pressure to give him that right, but we felt that that also would involve some risk, at least, of impairing the process of conciliation and might provide encouragement to those who thought to make some quick money out of this exercise with the opportunity of going to the courts.
  It is the Board alone that can bring the proceedings on behalf of the victim of discrimination. The Board will be manned by responsible people and at the end of the day, if the Board brings actions which it loses, there will be an award of costs against the Board. It is true that in the long run it will come out of the taxpayers' pocket, but the Treasury will not be unwatchful, I hope, of what goes on in this way.
  Therefore, I invite the House to take the view that that responsible body, the Race Relations Board, would launch proceedings for recovery of damages in only the clearest cases and the obviously provable cases and that the risk of speculative actions is a risk which does not seriously exist.
  Accordingly, I earnestly hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and hon. Members opposite will not divide the House on this matter. To do so would create a profound sense of injustice and denial on the part of those whom we seek to protect. The circumstances in which damages will be awarded are, as I have tried to say, hedged round with careful provisions against abuse, limited in their prospect of recovering sums and responsibly placed in the Bill as part, but only a small part, of the machinery of the Bill, which is essentially machinery to achieve conciliation. In the circumstances that I have indicated, the award of damages will not conflict with that but is an essential element in the Bill for what, I hope, will only be the rare case.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: If doubts were capable of being assuaged on this matter, they would be assuaged by the calm and dispassionate tones of the Attorney-General at 2 o'clock in the morning, but my own doubts remain entirely unaffected even by right hon. and learned Gentleman's formidable combination of charm and forensic persuasiveness. He has not met the main criticisms brought so clearly by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) against the novel concept in Clause 21(1)(b) which, in my view, will impose a virtually impossible task upon the county court judges when claims for damages have to be tried.
  2.0 a.m.
  After all, the tests for damages in the ordinary courts are difficult enough, as the case books show, as to whether they arise in the ordinary course, whether they are reasonably foreseeable, and so on, but at least in those cases the court starts from a solid basis of contract and breach of contract, and the court is able to put itself in the shoes of the parties. I will give two or three short and simple examples to show the practical difficulties involved.
  I take first the simplest case of house purchase. The would-be purchaser is discriminated against. Under his duty to mitigate his loss, he buys a slightly smaller but cheaper house in the same locality. How is his loss to be evaluated? How can the less expenditure he has had to incur be equated and related to the slightly less result which he has achieved? In fact, this is an exercise that never has to be gone through. There is no such exercise in a case of breach of contract for the purchase of a house. It is achieved by the automatic method of the forfeit of the 10 per cent. paid if the contract is breached and does not go to completion.
  Take the case where there are three bidders. The vendor discriminates against one of those bidders and therefore the offence is committed and the right to damages accrues straight away, but the other bidder, in ignorance of that, raises his bid and buys the house at a higher price than the discriminated bidder has ever offered. Has he suffered any loss of benefit by that, or has he, on the other hand, as a result of that discrimination

  429
  been saved from buying a house for more than its proper value? How can the court know whether or not he in his turn would have raised his bid? How can the court know whether he would have been prudent to have raised it? How can the court know whether the successful bidder would have raised it yet again?
  I remember years ago in the House when we were debating the Local Government Bill, in 1948, Aneurin Bevan described the hypothetical tenant as a very fugitive character, but he is a solid figure compared with the phantoms and phantasies involved in these calculations.
  Take the slightly less probable but not impossible case of four bidders, one of whom is white, three of whom are coloured. The owner unfortunately discriminates against the three and sells the house to the one. How can the right of the damages of those three possibly be evaluated? Only one of them could conceivably have bought the house. Therefore, it would be completely unrealistic to apportion the damages into three. How is the judge to select the lucky recipient—by a pin?—or perhaps by calling in those assessors and inviting them to discriminate between the three on the basis of what the sonorous language of Clause 18 calls their:
  …special knowledge and experience of problems connected with race and community relations."
  I do not want to prolong this catalogue of hypothetical absurdities which could arise, but one finally comes to the case of five bidders this time, the same four as in the last illustration plus a Yorkshire-man. The owner of the house in this case is a Lancastrian and will not sell his house to a Yorkshireman, so he discriminates against the three coloured bidders and the one Yorkshireman. The difference is that there is no offence, no unlawful act, in his discrimination against the Yorkshireman, because it is not a discrimination on grounds of colour, race or ethnic or national origins.
  Mr. Grieve: Is my right hon. and learned Friend sure about the ethnic argument?
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: My hon. and learned Friend asks if I am sure about the ethnic argument. I do not remember my Greek in the same way as the right
  430
  hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), but my recollection is that "ethnikos" means heathen; so unless my hon. and learned Friend is saying that Yorkshire is heathen, I think I am right in my proposition. There would be no damages for the Yorkshireman and it would be impossible to calculate damages for the other three.
  One could give many other examples. In transport, for example; suppose that a man is discriminated against by a taxi driver and takes a bus instead. How would one evaluate the three elements of the loss of time, the saving of money and the additional discomfort? These exercises are not on, nor are they on in employment. The courts are not able to evaluate matters such as the likely length of stay with a firm, had the man succeeded in getting the job, the prospect of pay increases—that is, when the prices and incomes policy is no more—the possibility of the liquidation of a company, a take-over or redundancy. The courts are not equipped to do this.
  Subsection (2) will work inequitably and haphazardly. There might be two applicants for similar jobs in different firms discriminated against at the same time, one being held entitled to damages for loss of benefit and the other being denied damages because the employer is able, under this subsection, successfully to plead that, having regard to the proportion of employees, discrimination was necessary to secure or preserve a reasonable balance. This means that damages will not depend on the degree of injury suffered but on fortuitous circumstances, so reducing the processes of the law to a lottery.
  It is clear that this provision will give the courts and county court judges an impossible task. Nor will they get any help from the assessors. What their qualifications will be to enable them to pass judgment and render assistance on these intractable problems is far from clear.
  The Attorney-General: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that in any of the cases he has given of alleged absurdity the Race Relations Board would authorise the bringing of proceedings?
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: They are the sort of cases that will arise. They will go to the Board and we do not know how the Board will act in these matters. It might feel under considerable pressure not to be charged with denying the right of people to have their damages assessed by the judges. We cannot tell. We are probing into the unknown. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may have great confidence in the working of the Bill, but I cannot share it in view of the anomalies that are bound to arise.
  It is anomalous and undesirable in principle that a public board should sue for damages for the benefit of a private person and at the instigation of that person, paying the costs out of public funds. This whole concept of damages is regrettable and misconceived and I hope that my hon. Friends will not yield to the Attorney-General's suggestion that we refrain from dividing the House on this issue.
  Mr. John Lee: I do not propose to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) in all his ingenious arguments, although I concede that this is a difficult field of law. As one who generally welcomes the Clause, I foresee considerable difficulties in interpreting it. One of the problems which worries me I approach from a different standpoint from that of hon. Members opposite. The greatest objection to the proposal as it stands is the fact that the individual who suffers, or is alleged to have suffered, a loss as a result of discrimination has no part or lot in the decision whether or not an action should be taken. Hon. Members opposite appear to welcome this in so far as it would represent a restraint on frivolous, or possibly vexatious, litigation. The Board, being so mindful of social and political considerations, might decline to take action in any circumstances where it ought because the individual had suffered loss. Where there is common ground between the two sides about our reservations is that different criteria apply between what the Board might regard as desirable circumstances for taking action and what the individual will regard. Their views will obviously diverge.
  432
  Courts have had to embark on uncharted seas in assessing damages. My right hon. and learned Friend has advanced numerous instances of this happening, but this is a most unusual situation. One can well understand many city court judges proceeding "by guess and by God" for quite a while. I wonder whether it would have been better to have included some round figures, some upper limit, specific figures. Although they might be hard to justify, they would at least have provided some basis by which the courts could be guided. Earlier we had a long debate on whether it was appropriate to put in examples of discrimination. It might not have been a bad idea if in this Clause there were examples of the kind of damages which could be awarded. This would be an innovation, but we are embarking on an unusual field of activity.
  An Amendment which we shall come to later provides for other remedies, injunctions and so forth, as an alternative to damages, but also for an element of punitive damages. I would have wished that this element had been included. I would have thought that there was a good deal to be said for saying in circumstances where discrimination occurs, this is the kind of conduct which is not only damaging in the sense of depriving a person of certain pecuniary benefits, or benefits which can be assessed in monetary terms, but which is indicative of conduct which should be discouraged, just as damages for libel bear on the conduct of the person who commits the libel which affects the status of the individual victim.
  I do not know what the attitude of my right hon. and learned Friend will be to that Amendment. We shall have to wait until it is moved. He has been unduly defensive and apologetic because this Clause does not provide damages of that kind. Although we have our reservations and believe that the courts will be faced with a difficult task, we thoroughly welcome this provision. In the last analysis what is at stake is that someone will have suffered loss and, unless we make provision for remedying it financially, it is difficult to see how the Act will carry much weight for the kind of people it is designed to protect.
  Mr. Grieve: As I listened to the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. John Lee) I wondered whether some of his right hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench would not say, "God save us from our friends". When they heard him urge on the Government that damages should be arbitrary and punitive, I realised some of the pressures which have been responsible for the many defects in this legislation.
  2.15 a.m.
  I want to make only one point in addition to the points which have been so well and fully made by my right hon. and learned Friends the Members for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) and Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith). Quite apart from the difficulties of enforcing claims for damages, quite apart from the difficulties of assessing damages, the prime objection which I see to the whole concept of damages in this legislation is that it puts those whom it is desired to protect in a privileged position in the community. It has been said several times in the House and in the Press that it does nothing of the kind, because everybody belongs to some race and, therefore, the whole community is covered by the Bill.
  This is wholly artificial. We all have various capacities. If we are discriminated against in 999 out the 1,000 capacities in which we exist and have our being, we have no claim for damages. If someone refuses to sell his house to me because I am a white man of Scottish descent and not because I am a Tory or a lawyer, I am given a claim for damages. What damages? The law of England over centuries has never recognised that anybody has lost anything by not getting that which he did not have before, unless he had a contract to get it. The argument founded upon the fact that this is creating a privileged class in the community is valid. The ultimate result of this, as of many of the Clauses dealing with housing, will be the very reverse of what is intended by the supporters of the Bill. It will create bitterness and worsen race relations.
  Mr. J. J. Mendelson: On this occasion the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), whose clear arguments I normally follow with
  434
  great interest, has not done justice to either his own intellect or the normal forcefulness of his case. He has piled case upon case to show what might be the difficulties of this legislation. One thing which the House should not let pass is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman brought a Yorkshireman into one of his examples. This was particularly unwise. If ever a report was to be published which proved that in six cities or towns Yorkshire men were strongly discriminated against, there would be legislation which would not be half as mild as this. I cannot believe that Yorkshire Members, no matter from which side of the House, would not wholeheartedly support such strong legislation. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should not introduce too much artifice into his argument. It weakens rather than strengthens it.
  The hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) brought up again the shoddy argument about creating a privileged class and a privileged section of the community. That is not an argument which anyone who takes part in these serious debates should advance. We are dealing with a subject which is, perhaps, among the most serious in community and individual relations in the world today. The Government are introducing pioneering legislation. It does not do justice to the situation for an hon. Member to try to create absurd examples and to trot out the kind of propaganda which the hon. and learned Gentleman uttered at the conclusion of his speech when he sought to damage the serious attempt made by a responsible Government to deal with this situation. If there are opponents of this legislation let them come clean and not pile up these artificial arguments. I hope that without any further delay the House will proceed to reject this Amendment and to support my right hon. Friend.
  Mr. Hogg: The Attorney-General always fascinates me. He is absolutely charming; one presents what is intended to be a serious argument to him; he gets up to reply; he answers none of the points; but coos like a wood pigeon, and by the time he sits down has so mesmerised his supporters into an orgy of enthusiasm that they cannot see that

  435
  they have been palmed off the branch. But he is not going to have me this time. This time we are going to divide.
  Question put, That the Amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 121, Noes 182.

  Division No. 273.]

  AYES

  [2.21 a.m.

  Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)

  Grant, Anthony

  Noble,-fit. Hn. Michael

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Grant-Ferris, R.

  Onslow, Cranley

  Astor, John

  Gresham Cooke, R.

  Osborn, John (Hallam)

  Baker, Kenneth (Acton)

  Grieve, Percy

  Page, Graham (Crosby)

  Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)

  Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)

  Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)

  Bell, Ronald

  Gurden, Harold

  Peel, John

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Percival, Ian

  Biffen, John

  Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Harrison, Brian (Maldon)

  Pounder, Rafton

  Black, Sir Cyril

  Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

  Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward

  Pym, Francis

  Body, Richard

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Bossom, Sir Clive

  Hogg, Rt. Hn. Quintin

  Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David

  Brinton, Sir Tatton

  Holland, Philip

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. Sir Walter

  Hordern, Peter

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Bryan, Paul

  Howell, David (Guildford)

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Buck, Antony (Colchester)

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Russell, Sir Ronald

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

  Burden, F. A.

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Scott-Hopkins, James

  Campbell, B. (Oldham, West)

  Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)

  Sharpies, Richard

  Chichester-Clark, R.

  Kerby, Capt. Henry

  Silvester, Frederick

  Cooke, Robert

  King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)

  Smith, John (London & W'minster)

  Corfield, F. V.

  Kirk, Peter

  Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

  Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Kitson, Timothy

  Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Teeling, Sir William

  Crouch, David

  Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry

  Thatcher, Mrs. Margaret

  Cunningham, Sir Knox

  Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

  van Straubenzee, W. R.

  Dance, James

  Maddan, Martin

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)

  Maginnis, John E.

  Weatherill, Bernard

  Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)

  Marten, Neil

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Dodds-Parker, Douglas

  Maude, Angus

  Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William

  Drayson, G. B.

  Mawby, Ray

  Williams, Donald (Dudley)

  Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)

  Maydon, Lt.-Cmdr. S. L. C.

  Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick

  Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)

  Monro, Hector

  Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard

  Errington, Sir Eric

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Woodnutt, Mark

  Eyre, Reginald

  More, Jasper

  Worsley, Marcus

  Farr, John

  Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

  Younger, Hn. George

  Fortescue, Tim

  Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles

  Gibson-Watt, David

  Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Goodhart, Philip

  Murton, Oscar

  Mr. Authony Royle and

  Goodhew, Victor

  Nabarro, Sir Gerald

  Mr. Humphrey Atkins.

  Gower, Raymond

  Neave, Airey

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Carmichael, Neil

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Chapman, Donald

  Foot, Rt. Hn. Sir Dingle (Ipswich)

  Alldritt, Walter

  Coe, Denis

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  Anderson, Donald

  Coleman, Donald

  Ford, Ben

  Archer, Peter

  Concannon, J. D.

  Forrester, John

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Fraser, John (Norwood)

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Freeson, Reginald

  Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

  Dalyell, Tarn

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

  Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)

  Ginsburg, David

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Barnes, Michael

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Barnett, Joel

  Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)

  Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

  Baxter, William

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  Blackburn, F.

  Dell, Edmund

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Dewar, Donald

  Hamling, William

  Booth, Albert

  Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

  Harman, William

  Boston, Terence

  Dobson, Ray

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

  Dunnett, Jack

  Haseldine, Norman

  Boyden, James

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)

  Hazell, Bert

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

  Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e)

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Bray, Dr. Jeremy

  Eadie, Alex

  Hilton, W. S.

  Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Hooley, Frank

  Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)

  Ellis, John

  Homer, John

  Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch& F'bury)

  Ennals, David

  Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)

  Buchan, Norman

  Evans, loan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)

  Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

  Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Howie, W.

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Fernyhough, E.

  Hoy, James

  Cant, R. B.

  Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

  Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

  Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

  Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)

  Short, Mrs. René e (W'hampton, N. E.)

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Marks, Kenneth

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Hunter, Adam

  Marquand, David

  Silverman, Julius

  Jackson, Colin (B'h'so & Spenb'gh)

  Mendelson, J. J.

  Slater, Joseph

  Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n& St.P'cras, S.)

  Mikardo, Ian

  Small, William

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Millan, Bruce

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

  Miller, Dr. M. S.

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

  Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W.Ham, S.)

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

  Swain, Thomas

  Judd, Frank

  Molloy, William

  Taverne, Dick

  Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

  Lawson, George

  Morris, John (Aberavon)

  Urwin, T. W.

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

  Moyle, Roland

  Varley, Eric G.

  Lee, John (Reading)

  Murray, Albert

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Newens, Stan

  Watkins, David (Consett)

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  O'Malley, Brian

  Weitzman, David

  Luand, Evan

  Orbach, Maurice

  Wellbeloved, James

  Lubbock, Eric

  Orme, Stanley

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

  Oswald, Thomas

  Whitaker, Ben

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Palmer, Arthur

  White, Mrs, Eirene

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

  Whitlock, William

  McBride, Neil

  Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

  Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  MacColl, James

  Pentland, Norman

  Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

  Macdonald A. H.

  Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)

  Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)

  McGuire, Michael

  Richard, Ivor

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross&Crom'ty)

  Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P'c'as)

  Winnick, David

  Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

  Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)

  Winstanley Dr. M. P.

  Mackintosh, John P.

  Rose, Paul

  Woof Robert

  Maclennan, Robert

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William

  Yates, Victor

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Ryan, John

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

  Sheldon, Robert

  Mr. Joseph Harper and

  Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Mr. Charles Grey.

Clause 21

  DAMAGES
  2.30 a.m.
  Mr. Alexander W. Lyon: I beg to move Amendment No. 88, in page 14, line 31, at end insert—
  (3) In any case where it appears to the court reasonable so to do the court may in lieu of awarding damages under this section order the defendant to take such steps as may appear to the court to be equitable to place the person in respect of whom the complaint has been made as nearly as is practicable in the position in which he would have been but for the unlawful act; and if any defendant fails or neglects to comply with any such order within such period (or such extended period) as the court may allow, the court may thereupon award damages against him; and in the calculation of such damages the court shall take into account both the conduct of the defendant and any loss suffered by the person in respect of whom the complaint has been made which may be attributable to such failure or neglect.
  This is a matter which arises out of the Street Report which, of course, was the basis of this legislation. The authors of the Report suggested that it might be a more effective remedy to a person who has been discriminated against if he could be put into the position that he would have had if he had not been the victim of discrimination, and for that reason a mandatory order would be better than either an injunction or damages. Indeed, this would to some extent get round the difficulty which the right
  438
  hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) raised about damages in that they would be speculative and to some extent arbitrary, because the effect of a positive or mandatory order would be that the person got the job, or the house, or the service, which he had been deprived of by reason of the discrimination.
  The reasons for the Amendment were fully set out in the Street Report, and I do not intend to repeat them They are well known to the Front Bench, and I do not anticipate that at this stage of the Bill they are preparing any concession. But I think it would have been advisable if, at an early stage of the drafting of the Bill, they could have included positive orders, and I hope they may think about it again before it gets to another place.
  The Attorney-General: I regret that I must advise the House to reject this Amendment. Mandatory injunctions to deal with the kind of situation which we are considering in this Bill would be, I submit, objectionable in principle. To empower a court, for example, to order an employer to employ a certain man, or a householder to sell his house to a particular individual, would be unacceptable.
  An injunction is an appropriate remedy to prevent anyone from engaging

  439
  in a discriminatory course of conduct, but where an individual has suffered an ascertainable loss through discrimination, the provision in the Bill which we discussed in the last Amendments for the award of damages is, I submit, the appropriate remedy. Accordingly, in my submission the proposal for mandatory injunctions should be rejected.
  Mr. Hogg: I should like to congratulate the Attorney-General. He has just persuaded the House to indulge in the absurd, but he has refrained from compelling it to attempt the impossible. Of course what is attempted by the hon. and learned Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) is not merely absurd but also impossible. It is, as the Attorney-General has pointed out to the House, quite impossible to secure, without grotesque injustice, specific performance of a contract of service, a contract of letting or a contract of purchase. But it is also logically impossible to attempt to do so. This is why the hon. Gentleman is pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp.
  It is conceded that what a man is entitled to if he is not discriminated against is not to succeed in a contract but to be entitled to compete for one. When the act of discrimination is complete the contract goes off to somebody else, the house is sold, the job is filled, or the taxi-cab, if it is the case of a taxi-man discriminating, is driven off to Euston. What the hon. Gentleman is seeking to persuade us is to put things back as if they had never happened. I can see the force of the injunction, by a stretch of the imagination I can conceive of the absurdity of the damages, but to turn the clock back and make it never to have happened is something which even the hon. Member, as the Attorney-General has rightly pointed out, cannot achieve.
  Mr. John Fraser: I hope that the Attorney-General will be good enough to look at this again. I think he fell into the same trap as the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) in choosing examples which were not valid ones. I see no reason why he should come to the belief that the judges would never find circumstances when a mandatory injunction would be necessary. I
  440
  give some examples, and ask him to think about this again.
  Take a mortgage from a building society. Say a building society able to give mortgages discriminates against somebody applying for one. Is there any reason why the court in some circumstances should not order it to grant a mortgage to that person?
  Secondly, take the sale of houses. There are many estates developed outside London consisting of, say, 250 houses all exactly the same and at the same price. Surely it is reasonable in these circumstances that a mandatory injunction should be given for the sale of one of these identical houses to a person who has been discriminated against.
  I suggest that there are also circumstances where if somebody were refused membership of a trade union branch through discrimination there should be a mandatory injunction for admitting the person to membership.
  There are many circumstances in which a mandatory injunction would be inapplicable, but there could be a few cases where it might be better to have the person discriminated against put in the position as if the discrimination had not taken place. I urge the Attorney-General to consider this and not exclude judges from ever being able to grant such an injunction.
  Amendment negatived.

Clause 25

  APPLICATION TO THE CROWN, THE POLICE AND PUBLIC BODIES
  Mr. Speaker: I have suggested that we should take Amendments Nos. 89, 90 and 91 together.
  Mr. Callaghan: I beg to move Amendment No. 89, in page 16, line 16, after first 'as', insert 'if it were'.
  The purpose of the three Amendments is to make it as clear as possible that Clause 25(2) does not alter the status of the office of constable. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) suggested a form of words in Committee most of which I have picked up here. It is slightly more complicated than he suggested, because the appointing authority may be an individual or a police authority, but the

  441
  intention is the same. The insertion of the words "if it were" I think makes the situation a little clearer.
  Mr. Hogg: I thank the right hon. Gentleman. Even at this late hour one must be grateful for small mercies, and though this may be small, it is certainly a mercy.
  Mr. Eldon Griffiths: I echo my right hon. and learned Friend's words. As the Home Secretary knows, there were two points at issue with regard to police. One was about the status of the constable, the question of employment, and the other was the question of the discipline code. The right hon. Gentleman has met the first one. The second one remains to be discussed in another place.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Further Amendments made: No. 90, in page 16, line 16, at end insert 'if he were'.
  No. 91, in line 18, leave out 'an employer' and insert:
  'if he or they were an employer or employers'. —[Mr. Callaghan.]

New Schedule

  INQUIRY INTO UNLAWFUL CONDUCT WHERE NO COMPLAINT IS MADE
  1. In investigating any matter under this Schedule the Board—

  (a) shall make such inquiries as they think necessary with regard thereto;

  (b) shall determine whether any person appears to them to have done any act which is unlawful by virtue of any provision of Part I of this Act;

  (c) shall use their best endeavours by communication with the persons concerned to secure, where appropriate, a satisfactory written assurance against any repetition of the act determined to be unlawful or the doing of further acts of a similar kind by the person by whom it was done.

  2. If on investigating any matter the Board determine that an act appears to have been done which is unlawful by virtue of any provision of Part I of this Act and they are unable to secure such an assurance, as aforesaid, or it appears to them that any such assurance has not been complied with, they shall decide whether or not to bring proceedings under section 18 or 19 of this Act.
  3. Where the Board determine under paragraph 1 of this Schedule that an act which is unlawful by virtue of any provisions of Part I of this Act appears to have been done by any person, or make any decision under paragraph 2 of this Schedule in relation to that person, they shall give him written notification thereof.—[Mr. Scott.]
  Brought up, and read the First time.
  Mr. Nicholas Scott: I beg to move, That the Schedule be read a Second time.
  The essence of the new Schedule is to replace the cumbersome procedure in Schedule 3 for dealing with cases where no complaint has been made. The machinery both in Schedule 2 and Schedule 3 is extremely cumbersome. There may be some excuse for it where a specific complaint has been made. There is no excuse for it where no such complaint has been made.
  One of the main advantages of this new Schedule is that it would replace four pages by half a page of procedure. The voluntary machinery which is included in Schedule 2 and repeated in Schedule 3 is being set up specifically to deal with complaints. I do not see that it is necessarily appropriate to deal with a more general state of affairs where no complaint has been made.
  Schedule 3 in any case is, to a large extent, a repetition of Schedule 2, with some very loosely drafted provisions such as that the voluntary machinery shall keep in touch with those who appear to be concerned with the complaint rather than having to tell any specific people of any decision which is reached. Where the Board comes to a conclusion that there is a matter which merits its investigation but on which no complaint has been made, it should be able to follow up its own initiative to determine whether any act has been done which is unlawful and use its best endeavours to achieve a settlement. The whole initiative in these circumstances should rest with the Board.
  Mr. Ennals: The hon. Gentleman's intentions are worthy but I cannot accept the new Schedule. It is true that Schedule 3 is complicated, but the present draft is necessary in order to spell out the arrangements properly and to try to produce a simplification can often lead to difficulties in these circumstances. One of the effects would be to exclude conciliation committees and the voluntary machinery in employment cases from investigating suspected cases of discrimination, and I think that this would be unacceptable.
  An undertaking has already been given to allow industry's own machinery the first opportunity to settle employment

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  cases and we must abide by that. As for conciliation committees, where the voluntary machinery is involved the Bill already allows the Board to decide whether to investigate a suspected case itself or refer it to a conciliation committee. There seems no reason to preclude investigation by a conciliation committee. This would be an undesirable result of the hon. Gentleman's proposal and I regret that I cannot accept it.
  Question put and negatived.

Schedule 2

  COMPLAINTS RELATING TO EMPLOYMENT, TRADE UNIONS AND ORGANISATIONS OF EMPLOYERS
  Amendments made: No. 95, in page 20, line 27, after 'and', insert:
  'it is accompanied by the name and address of the person by whom it is made and'.
  No. 98, in line 46, leave out from 'that' to 'shall' in line 47 and insert:
  'the act was one of discrimination against a particular person'.
  No. 99, in page 21, line 6, leave out from 'of' to 'shall' in line 7 and insert 'any other complaint'.
  No. 103, line 44, leave out 'determination' and insert 'conclusion'.
  No. 104, in page 22, line 13, leave out 'Minister' and insert 'Secretary of State'.—[Mr. Ennals.]

Schedule 3

  INVESTIGATION OF UNLAWFUL CONDUCT WHERE NO COMPLAINT MADE
  Amendments made:
  No. 106, in page 24, line 8, leave out 'by any person' and insert
  'against a particular person, shall'.
  No. 107, in line 15, leave out from 'investigation' to 'shall' in line 16 and insert 'does not so relate'.
  No. 109, in page 25, line 21 [Schedule 3], leave out 'another person' and insert 'a particular person, shall'.
  No. 110, in line 28, leave out from 'investigation' to 'shall' in line 29 and insert 'does not so relate'.
  No. 111, in page 26, line 18, leave out 'determination' and insert 'conclusion'. —[Mr. Ennals.]
  Order for Third Reading read.
  [Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified]
  2.45 a.m.
  Mr. Ennals: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
  Mr. Speaker: May I announce to the House that I have not selected the Amendment.
  Mr. Ennals: I am very proud to have been involved with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in piloting the Bill to its Third Reading and proud also to be a member of a Government which has had the wisdom and courage to produce the Bill. Discrimination on racial grounds is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, issues of our time and it is an issue which none of us can afford to sweep under the table. It has to be dealt with and it has to be dealt with firmly. Racial discrimination faces this country with a challenge to our beliefs in the principles of equality, and it is a challenge which we cannot hesitate to meet.
  The Bill is based on existing experience of the Race Relations Board and the 1965 Act. At this stage it is appropriate to pay tribute to the work of the Board and to Mr. Mark Bonham Carter, its Chairman, and the other members for the work which they have done, because it was partly the experience and success of that earlier Measure which has enabled us to come forward with this.
  I recall that in the Third Reading debate in 1965 the hon. and learned Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) said:
  "I regard this Bill as a most dangerous attack on liberty…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th July, 1965;Vol. 716, c. 1064–5.]
  That was said three years ago of the 1965 Act. How absurd it was! In fact it has expanded liberty. It has expanded the liberty of the subject in fields in which there was discrimination and it has done so without creating antagonism. The general principle of legislation has not been convincingly challenged on Second Reading, nor in our 50 hours in Standing Committee, nor yet today. The debate has been about the scope and application of the legislation.
  I want to thank my hon. Friends on the Standing Committee and right hon.

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  and hon. Members opposite, especially the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) who played such a constructive rôle in the Standing Committee, which was a very constructive Standing Committee. It was one of those Committees when we did not divide in two directions. As has been said, we divided in five directions, two on our side and three on the other side. The discussions led to substantial improvements in the Bill. Our discussions resulted in a number of suggestions for amending the Bill which the Government have been happy to accept on Report.
  In particular we have redefined discrimination to make it clear that, in the context of the Bill, that means treating somebody less favourably than other people because of his race, colour, or ethnic or national origin; but, in so doing, we have emphasised that it is no part of the Bill's purpose to create a privileged class. We have accepted the views of the Standing Committee that the Crown should rot be excepted from the procedure laid down in the Bill, and we have changed the exception relating to small employers so that, for the first two years of the operation of the Bill, those employing not more than 25 employees will be excepted, and that for the following two years, those employing not more than ten people.
  Similarly, we have raised the limit of exception for landlords so that, for the first two years of the Bill's operation, only those with more than 12 lodgers will be subject to the provisions of the Bill and, thereafter, only those with more than six.
  We have also made it clear that anybody disposing of his own property privately without using an estate agent or without advertising it will not be affected by the provisions of the Bill, and that any harassment of a tenant on racial grounds will be unlawful. There has also been a number of other Amendments made in the light of discussion in Committee to meet the wishes of hon. Members on both sides.
  Some hon. Members have sought to weaken the Bill and others to strengthen it. Indeed, some of my hon. Friends would have made it a much tougher Measure, shifting the emphasis from conciliation to enforcement but in the Government's view this was not a proper
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  thing to do. It is sensible that we should pass a law which can command the support of the majority of British people who accept tolerance and fair play regardless of race.
  The strength of this Bill will lie, not only in its actual provisions, but in the lead which it will give to the country "to practice tolerance and live together as good neighbours"—and for that I quote from the Charter of United Nations. I believe that it will be an historic occasion when this Parliament declares that discrimination in all fields covered by this Bill is not only morally wrong, but an offence in law. The Bill is an historic contribution to Human Rights Year in which all parts of the world are taking part.
  Mr. Gilbert Longden: Is there anything in the present law of England which discriminates against any British citizen whatever his colour and, if there is not, then what is the object of this Bill?
  Mr. Ennals: The hon. Member does not appear to have been in the chamber for much of the time. If he had followed the debates at all he would know that there is discrimination and it is because there is this element of discrimination that we are determined it shall not be sustained. The Bill will form a firm foundation for a programme of voluntary action. We need that in industry, from management and the trade unions and through the whole range of commerce. We need an understanding that there is equal opportunity for all regardless of race.
  The Bill gives new scope for an educational campaign, but the most important thing is that the Bill should be used and not only by those whom it is sought to protect. Too much has been said to undermine confidence in the efficiency of this legislation that we are establishing. Some of the criticism made in this House has gone too far in undermining the effectiveness of this legislation. It is time that we spoke out, those of us who believe in this Bill—spoke out in the country, because if we say things that imply that this Bill will not have the desired effect, then those whom it is designed to protect will fear that the protection is not there. Hon. Members

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  of this House have a responsibility in this connection.
  As a result of the debates in Committee and on Report, I believe that we are entitled, and I am speaking for the Government, to have a united House tonight. I hope that those who may have criticised this Bill will have second thoughts about whether they should vote against it. It would be in the interests of good race and community relations if the House was not to divide on the Bill, and I hope that that will not happen.
  2.56 a.m.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: I want to start with a brief word about the connection between the attitude of people to this Bill and their attitude to race relations generally. There have been suggestions from outside this House that opposition to this Bill, or even criticism of it, derives from an illiberal attitude to race relations. I consider that such a suggestion is unjustified and reprehensible, reflecting at best an ignorance of, and reckless indifference to, the basis of the criticism, and at the worst a smear of an unpleasant character.
  There is no inconsistency in combining a liberal attitude towards race relations generally with a belief that this Bill is, on balance, a bad one. In my own case I am against racial discrimination in all the many and varied forms in which it unfortunately manifests itself throughout the world today. I am in favour of racial harmony, understanding and co-operation. I believe in the equality of legal and political rights and status for all.
  Like my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) I belong to a profession, which, without compulsion of law, has over the years, practised non-discrimination and equality of opportunity. I am proud and happy to be a member of the Bar in a Commonwealth country which is perhaps one of the most multi-racial countries in the world. In February last I was one of 76 hon. Members of this House who found it necessary to vote against Clause 2 of the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill, which I regarded as a gross discrimination, based on a breach of faith.
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  Nevertheless, against that background, I believe reluctantly that this Bill is on balance, a bad Bill. It is bad because it is inept for the high purposes which it purports to serve, and bad because it is likely to exacerbate the situation which it is designed to ameliorate and to evoke the dangers which it is designed to exorcise. There is nothing paradoxical or even very unusual in this. We know from the old proverb the sad fate of those good intentions which take account only of the end and are indifferent to the means. That is a course which this Parliament should never take.
  Here we are not engaged in promulgating intentions but in formulating laws. What we put upon the Statute Book is binding on courts and citizens alike, not in the generalised context of their intention, but in the specific context of their provisions. In English law, unlike Continental law, there is no licence to look at what they call travaux préparatories.As the leading textbook on the subject, "Maxwell on the Interpretation of Statutes", puts it:
  "It is unquestionably a rule that the Parliamentary history of an enactment is not admissible to explain its meaning."
  In another passage Maxwell says:
  "The rule of construction is to intend the Legislature to have meant what they have actually expressed."—
  a flattering assumption, which I hope we deserve.
  There rests, therefore, on Parliament a high and heavy duty to see that bad laws, even if well-intentioned, are not put on the Statute Book. It is not enough for Parliament to identify a problem and propound a solution. It must be the right solution. Otherwise we fall into that false syllogism which in the early days of the last Parliament I diagnosed as the central weakness of this Government—the false syllogism "something should be done; this is something; therefore, let us do it". This Bill is unhappily another example of this false logic. It is, no doubt, some comfort to hon. Members to feel that they are doing something, but if it is the wrong something, we are asking the citizen and the law to pay the price for our own feeling of comfort in this situation.
  I come to the imperfections of this Bill, the imperfect means that mar the worthy aim. Part I of the Bill is far

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  from perfect, despite its good intention. Difficulties of definition and drafting, inherent in this exercise, stand out in almost every Clause. The very exemptions and inconsistencies proclaim the difficulty of the task and the imperfection of the result—the exemption for shipping and the different treatment of employment on the one hand, which is the concern of large and powerful organisations, compared with the treatment of housing which is the concern of small and humble citizens.
  Nevertheless, mindful of its good intentions, it would be possible to swallow Part I but for the enforcement provisions of Part II, Part II is a novelty in our law and legal system. It is a sort of grey no-man's land between criminal and civil proceedings. It seems to combine the consequential rigours of criminal proceedings without their safeguards, and the penalties of civil proceedings without their even-handedness.
  Consider the combination of circumstances with which the subject of a complaint is faced. There is no reason to suppose that every complaint will be justified. They are formidable indeed—the novel methods of inquiry, the power to impose perpetual injunctions and to exact perpetual assurances, the grim sanction of indefinite incarceration by way of committal for contempt, the fear of damages with an award of costs superimposed, the spectacle of a powerful board as adversary with all the resources of public funds behind it. Is not that a prospect at which the stoutest heart might quail and to which the clearest conscience might yield? [Laughter.] The Home Secretary laughts, but it might well be so.
  Mr. Callaghan: The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) was laughing.
  Sir D. Walker-Smith: It is not really a laughing matter. It is not a laughing matter on either side of the House.
  In such circumstances, though there might be victory, there would not be justice. It would not help race relations because it would create bitterness and provoke the very evil which the Bill is intended to eradicate. Part II is radically defective in that it constitutes a derogation from our accepted standard of the rule of law, and the progress of
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  this Bill has unfortunately shown no material improvement. It follows that in this vital respect the Bill stands as it did when, on 23rd April, we were obliged to condemn it because on balance it would not in its praotical application contribute to the achievement of racial harmony.
  For that reason we voted as we did that day, and I believe rightly; and for that reason, regretfully but still rightly, I think we should condemn it tonight.
  3.5 a.m.
  Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I rise to make my only comment on the Bill, and it will not take more than a couple of minutes to do so. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has pointed out, the purpose of legislation is not merely to establish the boundaries of the permissible. It is also to create climates of opinion and to establish custom and behaviour. As has been pointed out, that is peculiarly the case in the Bill.
  There are areas that the Bill does not touch and has not attempted to touch, but I hope that behaviour in those areas will be influenced by the Bill. If behaviour is not so influenced, it will be necessary to legislate further.
  As an example of that, I refer to clubs which practise racial and colour discrimination. There is one such club in Wolverhampton. It has been blacked, if that is the right word, by the entertainment unions because it has discriminated against a coloured singer, a Miss Ruth Saxon, and refused her entry to the club. I hope that the Club and Institute Union will realise that it cannot run away from its responsibilities and that no racialist club can be permitted to remain a member of the C.I.U.
  The T.U.C. will be asked to carry a resolution on the subject this year and I believe that this will be helpful, together with this legislation, in creating a climate in which racial prejudice is recognised for what it is, a sort of venereal disease of the spirit. I am sorry if there are those who suffer from that disease in this House. That Bill is their medicine. They may not like it, but in the end it will do them and all of us a great deal of good.
  3.7 a.m.
  Sir S. Summers: I was glad that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D.

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  Walker-Smith) began his speech by saying that those who consider this to be a bad Bill and who intend to vote against it should be acquitted of any suggestion of being racialist by so doing.
  I want to start by protesting as strongly as I can against the leading article in The Times a few days ago.
  Mr. J. C. Jennings: Absolute rubbish.
  Sir S. Summers: That part which I consider totally unjustified reads as follows:
  "Those who disobey the Conservative Party whip in order to oppose it cannot escape the charge that they do not care how their coloured fellow citizens are treated."
  [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] The article also accuses those who would vote against the Bill of a complete lack of charity.
  In the whole of this discussion, which is dealing with an entirely novel field, it would be much happier for all concerned if those of us who differ from others had a little more charity, tolerance and humility, because—perhaps I may be wrong, perhaps they may be wrong—we are dealing with a new situation. As such, mistakes may well be made, and it is dangerous to take up rigid attitudes at this stage without the experience of this kind of legislation from the past, because we may regret so doing.
  Unlike practically every other hon. Member, I was prevented from being here on Second Reading. I shall not speculate what I would have done had I been here. At least, I tried to discover what has gone on since. In studying the Committee stage, I was a little disappointed to find that on 23 occasions when there was a Division my Front Bench was on the losing side, compared with only eight times when they were on the winning side. So, from a superficial point of view, it would appear that they did not succeed in making drastic changes in the Bill which, at the time it was presented on Second Reading, attracted a reasoned Amendment to throw it out.
  I have considerable faults to find with the Bill, notably the rôle assigned to the Ministry of Employment and Productivity, and the limited scope for exemption for what is termed the small operator
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  both in housing and in employment. Those who think that not sufficient changes have been made in Committee may well feel that the reasons that prompted the Opposition to throw out the Bill on Second Reading still prevail. I do not share that view. I confess that I am influenced somewhat by the fact that a close friend of mine in America is at present suffering in prison for his activities in the civil rights campaign. I am influenced further by the thought that in my view Martin Luther King was one of the greatest men of our time, and I cannot but believe that some legislation is needed.
  I will not go into detail, but I fear that the outstanding speech of my hon. and learned Friend at the beginning might well have been made on almost any Bill on this subject presented to the House. He did not indicate what changes would have prompted him to say that this would do more good than harm, and there are many who take a serious view of the Bill and would probably take a similar view on almost any Bill that was introduced. Therefore, in the last resort, one has to make up one's mind whether one is merely against any legislation, in which case clearly the consequence is to vote against this Bill.
  If, on the other hand, one believes that some Bill is needed, it is very much more difficult to decide whether or not to vote against this one, but on balance, as I say chiefly because the emphasis is on conciliation, I am prepared to give it a chance to see how it works, without voting for it but without voting against it.
  To those who intend to vote against it I would say three things. It is frequently said by mothers of children who are in danger through the lack of a zebra crossing, "Must we wait until two or three more children are killed before the safeguard is provided?" There is evidence that there is widespread discrimination in this country. Must we wait for the situation of discrimination to get all that much worse than it is before the House takes its courage into both hands and tries to legislate? If we take the view that the problems of drafting, of penalties and of enforcement are so complicated and intractable that this is not a subject that can be tackled by legislation, sooner or later that view will recoil to our regret and to our detriment.

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  Fortunately, the problem associated with colour as yet is comparatively small, thank God, compared with the situation in America. If legislation to tackle the problem is put off the problem will become more serious. We will make mistakes in the Bill;I have no doubt that the next Government provided from this side will make drastic changes in the Bill—I hope they do. The question that we must ask ourselves in the last resort is whether this is a perhaps inadequate attempt to provide a background which will help to create a public opinion response on this subject, or whether it is such a bad Bill that we will throw it out. I hope that we will give it a chance and see how it works.
  3.15 a.m.
  Miss Joan Lestor: Although I do not wish to delay the House at this late hour, as one who is very conscious of the meaning of this legislation and who has a large number of immigrants among my constituents, I must comment on a few aspects of the Bill.
  I welcome the Measure and the fact that the Labour Party it talking about equality for everybody. Although some of my hon. Friends have severely criticised the Measure, and I have shared their view, we would be foolish not to accept this as a good first step in the right direction. However, it would be wrong for us now to rest on the assumption that, having declared that we want equality for all, the problem will solve itself. It will not, because the Bill represents only a small part of the public education that is vital in this sphere. Many of us are wondering where we go from here, and that is why we are apprehensive about the enforcement aspects of the Measure.
  When the Bill was first discussed people tended to talk more about immigration than about race relations. Many speeches about immigration were made at that time and we tried to point out that we were really concerned with race relations. That must be right because we are concerned with relationships among our population, among the people who are already here and among those who are likely to come here. Nevertheless, one cannot separate one's attitude towards immigration from one's attitude towards building harmonious race relations.
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  I will not hark back to previous legislation, except to point out that the impact of that legislation—including the provisions affecting Asians in Kenya—made us hesitant on this score That is why I say that one cannot separate one's attitude towards immigration from one's attitude towards building a harmonious society.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I am afraid that we can separate them on Third Reading.
  Miss Lestor: I wish to refer to Clause 24, which enables the Government to conduct research into the whole question of race relations and the building of a better society. It is in this context that I wish to make it abundantly clear how sad it is that when we in Britain talk about immigration we think in terms of coloured immigrants. I have deduced from Answers to Questions in the House that this impression is unfounded. From the employment point of view, the Home Office has admitted that there are more white than coloured immigrants coming to this country.
  It is vital to remember this, because on so many occasions when we have talked about race relations and immigration we have virtually always talked about coloured immigration. This highlights the question of colour, when that should not be the main issue. For this reason the Government should, when conducting research—as they can under the Bill—direct their attention to having a rational immigration policy which removes the present emphasis on colour from the concept of immigration. We must devise a policy which is concerned with skills and the needs of the country.
  There should not be a limit placed on people from one part of the world because they happen to be coloured, and no ceiling should be placed on people from other parts. Unless we have such a rational policy we will go on talking only about coloured immigration. And if that happens, this Measure will not achieve any of our hopes. This is an important Bill and, if we try, we can make it effective. That will not happen unless, when we talk about immigration, we talk about it broadly and not in terms of colour.
  3.20 a.m.
  Mr. John Hall: It will not pass unnoticed that I put my name

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  to an Amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Sir F. Bennett) which is in almost identical terms with that tabled by the Opposition on Second Reading, except, of course, that it has one or two amendments to bring it up to date. It was moved by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) in an outstanding and very moving speech.
  In that speech, my right hon. and learned Friend said:
  "Again we are proposing to divide the House on a reasonable Amendment. Again we will seek to improve the Bill in Committee. Again, if scome of our objections are met, there may be a chance of passing the Bill on Third Reading."
  Later in his speech, when he was referring to the judgment of the Lord President of the Council, who had said that when the Bill became law it would
  "probably be uneven in application and partially ineffective,"
  my right hon. and learned Friend said:
  "We think this subject is so important that Parliament ought not to be asked to pass a Bill which will 'probably be uneven in application and partially ineffective.' If a Bill is partially ineffective it will bring the law into contempt. If it is uneven in application, which is what the Lord President said, it will certainly exacerbate racial relations, not improve them."
  So far as I understand the proceedings in Committee—and having listened to the debate today—only the most minor changes have been made in the Bill and they certainly do not meet the major objections raised on Second Reading by my right hon. and learned Friend. If he still retains the same objections—and he has shown a consistency in attitude to the Bill throughout the Committee and Report stages—if I am right in maintaining that the Bill has changed only in minor respects, we are still in the position in which Parliament ought not to be asked to pass a Bill which, again in the Lord President's words, will
  "probably be uneven in application and partially ineffective."
  There is no merit, of course, as hon. Members on both sides will agree, in consistency purely for consistency's sake. Circumstances might arise, the march of events might demand, or even command, a change in attitude, but in this case nothing has happened between Second Reading and Third Reading which would
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  justify a change in attitude, certainly on this side of the House.
  There were three broad principles of policy which were described very well indeed by my right hon. and learned Friend in his speech which still remain the same, which I accept, and I imagine most hon. Members on both sides of the House accept. The statement with which my right hon. and learned Friend ended his speech is as true now as it was then. He said:
  "…the Government will not miprove matters in this field unless they can carry the people with them. Some of us flatter ourselves about being progressive. But the more progressive we are in this field, and the more progressive we think ourselves, very often the more surprised we are at how our constituents say that we are out of touch with them. And so it may be the case."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd April, 1968;Vol. 762, cc. 69–80.]
  Nothing has changed except perhaps the attitude of that great organ of editorial opinion, The Times, which has already been quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers). In its Saturday leader it was praising my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for handling the present issue which, it was said, divided our party, in such a way as to reduce the damage of disunity, but in an interesting leader on 13th April, it was condemning my right hon. Friend for tabling an Amendment which, it was contended, was designed to do exactly the same thing. On Saturday it suggested that those not prepared to follow the party line could cast reflection on the Conservative Party. On 13th April, The Times was saying:
  "it would be misguided to try to paper over Tory differences in that this would surely be to misunderstand what the public requires of an Opposition on a great issue. There are deep and sincere differences of opinion within the country as to the best method of dealing with the racial problem and it is likely to increase rather than to diminish respect for the Tories if the public can see these differences reflected within the party."
  On Saturday The Times was suggesting that those who were now against the Bill were men of prejudice, men without charity; little, mean men the product of the private bar and the provincial caucus. On 13th April the same newspaper said this:
  "It is not disreputable to argue that racial harmony cannot be achieved through the

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  pronouncements or the pressures of the law, and that it can be developed only through the healing properties of time, of education, or of other policies... It is entirely reasonable that this difference of opinion should be argued out in public debate."
  It is not for me to suggest why The Times should change its attitude in a leader which displays all the prejudice, meanness, hypocrisy and lack of charity which it professes to discern in those with whose views it does not agree. Perhaps I can comment, in reply to The Times reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan, that had the Good Samaritan lived in a time when the race relations legislation was in force, and had he been called upon to succour two injured travellers of different races, with the possible threat of being referred to the Race Relations Board if he chose to succour one first, he might well have passed by on the other side. This is no more absurd than the reference made by The Times to them. [An HON. MEMBER: "Sacrilege."] I suggest that the hon. Gentleman addresses that remark to The Times.
  Let me finally reiterate my own position. I think that some hon. Members on both sides of the House will know that for many years, in co-operation with many organisations and with leading citizens in my constituency of High Wycombe, I have worked with and through immigrant organisations to try to help them to settle into the community in which they have chosen to live. We have done a lot through these organisations to iron out differences which naturally arise when newcomers come to a town in large numbers—the problems of education, the problems of housing, the problems of catering for the different religious requirements which in themselves impose quite a problem on a comparatively small local authority. We have done a great deal to prevent the development of racial prejudice, both between the coloured immigrants and the white people in the town and—this is equally important—between members of the immigrant races themselves. A great deal of prejudice and discrimination exist between the immigrants who come to live in this country.
  I would be the first to admit that a great deal still remains to be done. I would be the first to admit that there are cases of discrimination, prejudice and injustice. However, there are cases of
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  prejudice, discrimination and injustice between white people as well as between white and black. Nevertheless, allowing for that, a very high degree of success has been achieved by those who work in this field in my constituency. In a town with one of the highest proportions of immigrants to white population in the country, a considerable degree of racial harmony has prevailed.
  Indeed, we have had no trouble of any consequence throughout the whole period that I have been the Member for this constituency. We have achieved this by education, by persuasion, by conciliation, by dealing with problems before they have arisen. We have done it without the aid of any new legislation. We have done it within the existing law.
  My objection is that the Bill when enacted will stir up all the prejudice which lies beneath the surface. It will make the work of those who are already working in this field far more difficult. It will create the impression among many people, with its anomalies, with its injustices, and with its appeal to the sanctions of the courts, that they are being singled out for discrimination themselves white against black. It will make our problems in a town like High Wycombe ten times more difficult. This is the reason I oppose this Bill. I opposed it at the beginning. I regarded it as a bad Bill. I still think it is a bad Bill. I shall go on doing what I have done throughout and in which I have been consistent, and that is, oppose it.
  I only pray that the Bill we pass in this House tonight will not do what I think it will do: I hope it will not provoke the animosities which, we know, underlie the feelings of some of our citizens in this country. I hope that it will not undo the work we in Wycombe have been doing for many years. I hope it will not do damage to the good relations we have built up in Wycombe over many years without the aid of legislation.
  3.30 a.m.
  Mr. Winnick: I would say to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) that good race relations have been destroyed in the last few weeks by the notorious speech of the right hon. Member for

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  Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I believe that it should be said that many of us were disgusted, nauseated, by the type of speech the right hon. Member made.
  The Bill is a most welcome Measure. I consider that there are certain imperfections in it, but I also would like to congratulate the Government on the Bill, for I believe that they should be congratulated on their courage in tackling this problem. It is a problem which needed to be tackled, and by this Bill they have taken necessary measures.
  Some mischief makers have spread the nonsense that what we are doing is creating a privileged minority. It is not true, and the people who spread that dangerous nonsense know it is not true. We are not in any way creating a privileged minority. What we are doing is to try to take the necessary steps to overcome the discrimination people have to suffer in Britain because of the colour of their skins. If any proof was needed that discrimination existed, and still unfortunately continues to exist, in our country, it was given by the P.E.P. report. I knew discrimination existed, and I raised the matter in the House before the P.E.P. report was published. What worried me was the evidence that the people suffering most in the coloured community were people who had been here the longest and the people with the most skills. That was indeed very worrying and disturbing, and as long as a single person in our country is penalised or discriminated against because of the colour of his skin the House of Commons ought to be very worried indeed.
  One of my hon. Friends said earlier that in America a situation existed in which all the car pullman porters are negroes and it is difficult for white people to become such porters. If that type of situation existed in Britain I would be against it. I do not look upon myself as being pro-negro or pro-white: I believe in equal rights, and I believe discrimination should be combatted. The Bill, to a very large extent, does so by the measures it proposes over housing, employment, and credit facilities.
  In what will be a very brief speech I must say I hope the House will not be
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  complacent about the future. In my opinion—perhaps I am being somewhat pessimistic—in the next few years we shall have a tremendous struggle in Britain to make sure that people who were born here, or who, if not born here, have spent most of their early life here and been brought up here, and who have non-white skins, have the same opportunities as the white people. What causes me more concern than anything else is the feeling that we shall not overcome the problem but will have the same type of racial situation as exists in the United States. It is not too late to learn lessons from America. Hence the reason we should welcome the Bill which, I hope, will become law in the very near future, but I hope that we shall not be unduly complacent about the the problems which will arise in the near future. Given good will and tolerance we can, I believe, overcome our problems, but we have to make sure that mischief-making people who stir up racial trouble are answered.
  We need political courage in facing the problem of the minority in Britain, and if we have sufficient political courage we can make sure that people not white can live their lives here in Britain without being penalised or discriminated against in any way.
  3.35 a.m.
  Dr. Winstanley: In a way this is perhaps rather a sad occasion, because I believe that the vast majority of hon. Members do not discriminate in their behaviour towards coloured people or people of different racial or ethnic origins, do not wish to discriminate, and do not believe that other people should discriminate. They want to see people protected from that kind of discrimination, but it seems to me rather unlikely that the message that will emerge tonight will have that degree of clarity.
  Our party political system is divisive in a sense, though I make no criticism of that. It is understandable and right perhaps, that whatever a Government suggest an Opposition tend either to oppose or at best damn with very faint praise. We must also accept that things people disagree about are news, and things they agree about are not often news. I make no complaint about that either, but it means that the divisions of opinion are often publicised with much

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  greater force than the agreements. This is inevitable, but on a moral issue of this kind we should all strive on an occasion like this to achieve the kind of unity and consensus which perhaps normally emerge only in time of war. When there is a war we do not very often find reasoned Amendments.
  I realise that that cannot be used as an argument for getting people to support a Bill which they regard as defective or do not agree with in detail. Therefore, before the Bills leaves us we should look at the kind of criticisms that have been made. Many hon. Members have said that it will not do its job and cannot be enforced. I accept some of those criticisms. We may find when it is operating that in many fields it cannot be enforced with the vigour and effectiveness that some hon. Members would wish. But that is not a reason for opposing it. The House has a duty to set an example by stating clearly at least what should happen, even if it cannot enforce it to the fullest possible extent.
  It has been said by many hon. Members that in some curious way the Bill interferes with the ordinary liberties of the subject. Many examples have been given tonight. I do not accept for a moment that any well-intentioned person will be inhibited in any way from doing anything which any honourable or decent person should regard as something which he or she should be able to do. I think that it was the hon. Member for Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) who went on at some length about private behaviour in a person's private home. When we examined what he meant by the person's private home, the Englishman's castle, we found that he meant a house into which that person was taking various residents and paying guests, in other words, running a business. When a person runs a business by providing accommodation—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss on Third Reading an Amendment that we debated earlier.
  Dr. Winstanley: I am not discussing an Amendment, Mr. Speaker, but a matter which is in the Bill, which regulates what a person does in his or her home, if it is being used for business purposes. It is right that it should do so in this connection.
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  It has also been said by many hon. Members that in the, we are told, intimate matter of the private sale of a house the Bill in some way restricts a person's right to sell his house to whom he wishes. I tried to examine this by asking the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) what he thought about cases where people arranged privately to sell their house to an individual, not knowing that individual, satisfied themselves that the money was forthcoming and so on, but at the very end met the person, found that he was black and said, "I am afraid that I cannot sell the house to you." I asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman whether he thought a person ought to be permitted to say that, and he said "No." But that is precisely the kind of thing—and the only kind of thing as I see it—that the Bill stops them from saying.
  I accept that the Bill cannot do everything I should like it to do, but I do not accept these various arguments that in some curious way it restricts people from doing legitimate, sensible and reasonable things. I do not believe that any well-intentioned person will find that this Bill restricts them in any undesirable way at all.
  When I said this was a sad occasion, let me also say I am sure it is a very useful occasion, because I think it has helped many hon. Members to learn more about what the Bill actually means. I think many of them were not very clear about this. I hope too that, as a result of these discussions, it may help people outside to realise what the Bill means.
  I think I should emphasise, as did the hon. Lady the Member for Eton and Slough (Miss Joan Lestor), that this Bill is not about immigration. It is not about recent arrivals here. Whenever we discuss race relations and the people involved in this Bill, everybody immediately talks about recent arrivals, but I think we should constantly be reminded that the Bill is about people who live here, people who belong here, people who in another connection the Home Secretary might have referred to as belongers, people who have nowhere else to go to.
  When we talk about people being assisted to go back to their place of origin, it should be remembered that for

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  many of them their place of origin is Cardiff, Liverpool or Manchester. It is this kind of thing which this House should hammering home.
  Before I sit down, I should pass my congratulations to the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) for endeavouring to arrive at that kind of consensus. He was good enough to say some kind words about me on a previous occasion, and that did not do me any harm in Cheadle, and I hope my kind words about him tonight will not do him any harm.
  In the debate on the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill on 15th November, 1967, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that
  "persons lawfully within this country should be treated on the basis of the universal declaration of human rights, that one person should be treated in the same way as another in respect of dignity and human rights."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1967;Vol. 754, c. 441.]
  Surely that is precisely what this Bill is trying to do. It may have some sad effects; it may not do everything we would like; but I am sure it would do a lot if we all said now that we support it, as I and my right hon. and hon. Friends do.
  3.44 a.m.
  Mr. Heffer: I do not want to detain the House long, but one of the hon. Members on the other side said that he was influenced in supporting this Bill because of a friend he had who was a civil rights worker and who was imprisoned in the United States. I am influenced in supporting this Bill because I have in my own family relatives who are of a different colour from myself, and I know the experiences which they have had at different times because of prejudice and certain discrimination that has been applied to them.
  As far as I am concerned, it is regrettable that we have had to bring in legislation of this kind. It would have been much better if we could have had orderly integration in our country, and a multi-racial society where prejudice did not exist, without any legislation at all.
  The only argument that has to be faced—the only serious argument that has been put forward—is whether the Bill is necessary and whether it is right
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  that we should bring it in. If we are honest with ourselves we have to admit that there has been practised over the past few years in particular among a small but nevertheless articulate section of the population discrimination against some of our citizens because of their colour and ethnic origins. Surely we have to learn the experience of the U.S.A. I said in Committee that the experiences in this country are not the same as those in the U.S.A. It would be wrong to translate its situation automatically in our country. But we have in front of us the experience in the U.S. where because they failed to tackle their problems early enough there is the great prejudice and upheaval that arises periodically in their cities.
  This Bill surely is designed, rightly, to make certain that we deal with the problem before it gets to the stage that it has done in the U.S.A. For that reason every citizen in this country who is not prejudiced ought to welcome the Bill. It is true that legislation cannot make any one of us love our neighbour. It cannot eliminate prejudice. It cannot make the person who is so twisted in mind and attitude love another person whose skin is a different colour. But what it can do, and what it will do, is regulate the habits of our people in a civilised manner. This surely is the essential nature of the Bill.
  The Bill obviously has a number of weaknesses. It could have been strengthened. But I do not think that the conciliation part could have been or ought to have been strengthened. I think we have got that right. Maybe our experience over the years will prove that we need to strengthen the Bill in this direction. But I think that it is right that we should, as we are doing in the Bill, rely first upon the normal methods of conciliation that exist within industry, and then as a last resort use the conciliation machinery in Part II of the Race Relations Board.
  I welcome the Bill in every way possible. It is a necessary Bill. I hope that hon. Members opposite who believe in the Bill as I do will not merely abstain from voting but give us their support in the Lobby in the same way as some of my hon. Friends found themselves in the same Lobby on a matter of principle last week.
  3.49 a.m.
  Mr. Scott: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall), I have spent much time and effort in my constituency in trying to encourage good community relations, and, indeed, in the last two years I have been chairman of the Voluntary Liaison Committee in the City of Westminster which has worked for better community relations in that city.
  I am bound to say that my experience has led me to exactly the opposite conclusion from that to which the experience of my right hon. Friend has led him. Many people have made many suggestions about what will be achieved or what will happen as a result of the passing of the Bill. I think it will do three very positive things, and three very desirable things. First, it will make clear that this nation is opposed to racial discrimination and that a public declaration is important. Secondly, it will give support to the wobblers, those who say that they do not want to discriminate but that their tenants, customers or employees will not like it unless they do. Thirdly, it will provide some redress to those of our citizens who suffer the humiliation of racial discrimination.
  It is not a strong Bill but if it is operated well, vigorously and effectively, it can win the confidence both of the host and of the minority communities and can make a real contribution to harmonious race relations, and it can make clear that racial discrimination is not only unlawful but no longer respectable.
  Much depends on the way in which the Board and the Community Relations Commission work, particularly the latter, because law enforcement is one thing but the development of community relations through the Commission is perhaps the bigger part of the task. If it can work imaginatively at national level and can encourage local committees to work in that way in our cities;if it can not only encourage compliance with the law but affirmative voluntary action to wipe out racial discrimination by voluntary action, then the passing of the Bill can be a beginning and not an end to a story.
  The debates on the Bill have been confused much with the debate on immigration. To my mind, what the Bill
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  is about is that children in Paddington and many other places who have been born here, are going through our schools, who will get their O and A levels and many of whom will go to university, will want the jobs for which they are qualified and the houses they can afford. If we do not give them those jobs and houses, we shall be storing up a problem for ourselves. But this is not really why we should be passing the Bill. They should get the jobs they are qualified for and the houses they can afford because it is right that they should do so.
  3.53 a.m.
  Mr. Michael Foot: The hon. Member for Paddington, South (Mr. Scott) has made a courageous speech and I do not wish to be tempted into examining the fissures in the party opposite. It might not help him and others in overcoming them. But something should be said and I say it directly to the right hon. Member for Wolver-hampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I waited to see whether he would take part in these debates. I think that he should have done. One of the virtues of the House is that the views that an hon. Member expresses, particularly when they are unpopular, can be tested in debate. When an hon. Member makes claims, wide or extravagant, they can be subjected immediately to cross-examination. For example, the case of the Wol-verhampton widow might have been disposed of at once in the House. In the same way, many of the other allegations he has made outside the House he has not chosen to make inside it.
  The right hon. Gentleman has such a great reputation in this House—everyone knows he can defend his views with great ability—that I find it remarkable that he has not chosen to try and persuade his fellow Members to accept the views he has stated outside. I do not accuse him of lack of courage. It would be foolish for anyone to do that. As I have said, his ability is of the very highest. That makes it all the more remarkable, if the issue is of such paramount importance for the future of the nation, as the right hon. Gentleman said in his famous, or infamous, speech, that he has not spoken in these debates. Surely this is the place where he should have come to speak, and then the House of Commons would have been able to judge

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  whether he was prepared to speak in the House in the same tone which he used outside. I therefore say to the right hon. Gentleman—
  Mr. Evelyn King: On a point of order. Is this discussion of a speech largely about immigration and which in any event had nothing to do with the Bill in order on Third Reading?
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member must leave the Chair to judge what is in order.
  Mr. Foot: I have said what I wished to say. The reputation and the maintenance of the reputation of the House of Commons require that hon. Members, particularly those of high standing in it such as the right hon. Gentleman, should be prepared to state their views in the House. I invite the right hon. Gentleman, if he does not do it today, to seek an early opportunity to recapitulate in the House the views which he stated outside it, so that they may be subjected to scrutiny and examination by other hon. Members. One of the reasons why many of us welcome the Bill is precisely that it will help to remedy some of the evil consequences of the right hon. Gentleman's deed when he delivered that infamous speech.
  3.56 a.m.
  Mr. Evelyn King: Unlike the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), having spent about 70 hours on the Bill, it would be my wish, at four o'clock in the morning, to say something about the Bill which the House, whether it agreed with it or not, would find constructive. The reason I cannot do that is that within the rules of order I can discuss only what is in the Bill. A major criticism of the Bill is that, with the possible exception of Part III, which deals with the Community Relations Commission, it is negative and consists of a list of things which people must not do.
  I am practical enough to know that sometimes rules of that sort have to be made, but I earnestly hope, and I am entitled to say so in the light of some of the speeches, that no one will imagine for a second that the problems with which we are faced will be in any serious manner solved by the Bill. It would be out of order for me to dwell on the solu-
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  tions to the problem, which lie in housing, education and spending money. In effect—and I hope that I shall have fairly general agreement about this—it is a poor man's Bill, which does not touch the true and vital nature of the problem.
  The problem which worries me almost more than any other is that of workability. I believe that I can carry most hon. Members with me about that, especially those who feel strongly about the Bill. They at least should agree with me that if we were to make to the immigrant community promises which we could not fulfill, if we were to offer hopes which were not realised, we would do something irresponsible.
  I should like to comment on the workability. It is easy to overlook what the Bill says. The employment provisions, for instance, cover about 100,000 employers employing tens of millions of people. The Bill purports to say that if one of the million immigrants is unjustly treated in the means by which he gets his employment, or in the means by which he is promoted, or on the occasion on which he is sacked, there will be cause for complaint.
  It goes on to say that the sale of houses shall come within its scope. I do not know precisely how many houses change hands every year;certainly tens of thousands, or how many tenancies are changed, but certainly hundreds of thousands. What I press on the House is that the sheer weight, the sheer vast-ness of the field which we are trying to cover, is such that if it is covered, there will have to be a whole machinery of enforcement, with officials and staffs, which is nowhere in the Bill defined.
  A major portion of this work is to be done by the Race Relations Board. The total strength of that Board, to cover the whole field which I have tried to outline, is 19 persons; and from Buckinghamshire to Land's End I do not believe that there is a single one.
  It is well that we should legislate genuinely and sincerely. If we say that these are the things which we believe ought to be the law, we should say, also, that we know these are the things which we can, in fact, do. We should say that we are providing the machinery for carrying out our intention, but I believe that in this we are bound to be doomed.

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  That is largely why, in most of the comments I have ventured to make in the Standing Committee I have sought to reduce the area within which the Bill would work; and I say that because I would rather have some small measures which can bear fruit than to set out before the immigrant community a Bill so wide in its scope that it cannot effectively be enforced.
  At this hour I will say no more, but I beg hon. Members not to be misled by airy flights of talk about human rights. The first human right is that a promise made is fulfilled. Nobody would be more delighted than I if what I have ventured to say tonight comes to be proved wrong. If I am proved wrong, then I shall be delighted, but, on the evidence I have, I cannot prophesy for the Bill the success that I should like to see.
  4.5 a.m.
  Mr. Hogg: When I think of all the time which I have spent on the Bill since it was introduced on Second Reading I tremble to think that, at five minutes past four in the morning, I have yet another infliction to make on the House, but, having regard to the course which things have taken, I hope that the whole House would agree that manifestly I should not be doing my duty to the House—and indeed, still more to my party; because I have not played a small part in these debates—if I did not speak from this Bench.
  If what I say to those behind me, and even more to those opposite to me in such good numbers, is accepted with forbearance, I shall be content, but this is a matter in which a certain amount of candour is required.
  I think that I can honestly say that I can only remember one debate that I have ever taken part in in this House—the Norway debate, some time ago, in 1940—that has caused me more anxiety as to whether I was doing the right thing. In each case, I differed from some members of my own party. In each case, I was sorry to do so, because I respected them and respected their opinion. In each case, my decision was based partly on instinct as well as reason, but instincts are not always bad guides, especially if they are supported by experience.
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  We are now on Third Reading of the Bill, and, by custom, we only discuss its contents. There is one preliminary point I want to make, which is not purely a debating point, because it has a distinct bearing on our discussions. It will be seen that Clause 4, Clause 6, Clause 9, as amended, Clause 10, Clauses 11 and 12, as amended, the greater part of Clauses 13 to 17 inclusive, the whole of Part III, apart from one passing reference by my hon. Friend the Member for Ayles-bury (Sir S. Summers), whose speech I greatly appreciated, all the Schedules—none of these has come into controversy or serious discussion in today's debates.
  In a sense that is a debating point, because some were consequently on things in dispute. Broadly speaking, they are provisions in the Bill that are either accepted or not seriously disputed. When one is considering a vote, although I do not want to say anything about that part of the Bill which constitutes the greater part of the remarks I have already made, I would ask the House not to forget that I have mentioned it, because it enters into my calculations as to what the proper course is. There are two entirely separate questions in any House of Commons debate. The first is, what is one's opinion on the controversy? The second is how one translates that into the "yes" or "no" procedure which constitutes the voting pattern which, rightly, disciplines us into accepting or rejecting. The relationship between these two separate issues is often a question of anxious consideration.
  In this case, I have never had any doubt about policy, and there has been a wide consensus within my party upon what that policy should be. A dispute has arisen about how to translate it into a voting pattern. But, having accepted that this was basically a decision on which there was a very wide consensus of opinion, I am bound to accept that this has to be treated as a question of tactics, not in a pejorative sense, but in a proper, responsible sense, of casting a vote or not casting, acting in a way which does most good to the country, and which closely represents the opinion that one holds.
  I have always thought, and I say this in great humility, that in this House, and in public life, whereas principle must be a question for the individual conscience,

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  and policy must be a question for a party, tactics can legitimately be regarded as the prerogative of leadership. I say this in a House which has discovered during its short life, since 1966, many difficulties of tactics, on both sides. In approaching the Bill and its contents I was conscious of three broad groups of opinion in the House, all of which were represented in my party. I suspect that all of them are present in the party opposite, although they have not come to the surface.
  One is the group of enthusiastic supporters of the Bill, represented well in this Third Reading debate by the Undersecretary himself. I respect their opinion, and I think that even the most inveterate opponents of the Bill respect them, too. Certainly, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) respected it, because he described it—and it is not an insult so to describe it —as well-intentioned.
  If I may venture a friendly criticism, it is—and hon. Members will give me credit for having said so throughout—that they are perhaps a little too unaware of the extent to which they have to bring people along with them in their opinions, a Title too oblivious of the necessity for good legislation as well as good intention, and possibly again a little unaware of the difficulty of enforcing particular provisions about which some of us feel doubts. It is for that reason that although I have accepted many of the purposes behind the Bill, I have never numbered myself of that company.
  On the other side, and on the other extreme, I have been aware throughout of a body of opinion not represented so far in this Third Reading debate. Perhaps it has been holding back. There has been a body of opinion—and I challenge anyone to say that I am wrong—to whom any legislation of this kind or which bears a general resemblance to the legislation that we are discussing is wholly obnoxious. I do not reproach them any more than I reproach the enthusiastic supporters of the Bill. I do not accuse them of being uncharitable or of being racialist. On the contrary, I see quite clearly that it is their view that legislation of this
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  kind is inherently an infringement of individual liberty.
  As I have said for a very long time and repeatedly in the course of our debates, the only liberty which is worth while is ultimately the liberty to do what is wrong—that is to say, the liberty to do what other people think is wrong. Therefore, I respect and recognise that there is a legitimate moral value behind that opposition. But I must add that it is not my position.
  My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) was agreeable enough to say in a very well-written letter to The Times, which I read with great enjoyment, that he liked my political company. Well, I like his. But, knowing what his view is of this subject, knowing that he would oppose anything that right hon. Gentlemen opposite proposed, and that I do not reject everything that they propose, much as I enjoy his political company, I would find it a little embarrassing to find myself wholly identified in a straight vote against the Bill in the Lobby. I think that it would be natural for people who found us there together to suppose that we agreed, when we do not.
  That is one of the difficulties that I felt from the start about handling the tactics of the Bill, by which I mean the way in which to translate what I believe to be a consistent, although admittedly controversial, view about its contents into a consistent and intelligible voting pattern.
  I notice that none of the hon. Members on my side who have spoken so far on Third Reading have gone as far as I know the inveterate opponents of the Bill go. I wonder whether they are doing the party or the House or the country a service by identifying themselves with such a position. Respect it as I will, I cannot find it possible to identify myself with that position—that is to say, a blank negative to the Bill.
  I now come to the actual contents—that is to say, to those parts of the Bill that have been discussed. I refer to Clauses 1 and 2, the Clauses dealing with employment and accommodation, and the enforcement Clauses. These are all that are in controversy.

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  The whole House knows that I have had my reservations about Clause 1. I share the view, although it was never adequately discussed because of the Rules of Order, which was put forward at intervals by the hon. Member for Hamp-stead (Mr. Whitaker). I believe that it was a mistake to put in Clause 1 in such a form as it holds at the moment, in which the root of the Bill limits its base to race, colour, ethnic origin and national origin. I believe, and I have said before, that that tends to some extent to polarise the antagonism which we want to diminish.
  A more hopeful Clause 1 would have been something quite different which founded itself upon human rights. Unhappily, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South found that view quite as abhorrent as I found his total opposition to the Bill. As it was out of order we could never resolve our difficulties, but it causes me another doubt as to whether I should happily, on this occasion, find myself voting with my hon. and learned Friend in the "No" Lobby.
  That brings me to Clause 2, which we have discussed and which I have criticised. I did so yesterday, and I do not want to repeat my criticism. I now want to say a word about the question whether it is inherently an infringement of liberty, because this is one of the objections which some of my hon. Friends feel to the Bill as a whole and it can be as conveniently discussed in relation to Clause 2 as to any other part of it.
  I do not so find it. I have already said that I go along with it. I recognise that individual liberty involves the liberty to do what other people regard as wrong. I would fight for that liberty even where it was unpopular to do so, because it always is unpopular to defend in a public place the right to do what other people think to be wrong.
  I am, however, bound to add this proviso to that doctrine. Where individual acts add up cumulatively to a large-scale social injustice, it is, a least, for consideration whether Parliament ought not to deal with them. Where one is dealing with services offered to the public, whether by a barrister, as I tend to offer my services, or as I used
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  to do before the Bill started, or as a doctor, a priest or a shopkeeper, and more particularly where those services are offered to a section of the public by one of the great sources of supply—the great landlords, the great trade unions, the great businesses or the great providers of transport—I begin to think that one is dealing with something where, if the individual right to the service is infringed, a serious source of injury might take place.
  In at least two of the areas—and here I move on to Clauses 3 and 5—those of housing and employment, there is positive evidence that injustice on a serious scale may be taking place. I cannot, therefore, say that it is inherently and necessarily an infringement of the liberty which I respect to attempt to legislate about it.
  I agree that I find blemishes in the legislation, and I have not sought to minimise those blemishes. I do not think that the House was wise to include in the Bill those parts of it which are so wide of scope as to cover what we have agreed to call, by a kind of legitimate shorthand, the small operator. I wanted to deal with the large operator and with the large-scale effects. That the House has decided against.
  I accept the decision with regret, because I think it was a mistake, but in the end, in Clause 2, in Clause 3, in Clause 5, and in the subordinate Clauses 7 and 8 I find that there is material to praise as well as the material which I found to blame. So, also, in the enforcement Clauses. We have had a debate on damages and I will not repeat what I had to say then.
  I also wish to criticise those parts of the enforcement Clauses which convey exclusive jurisdiction upon a limited number of county courts, not on county courts as a whole and not on the High Court, and add those extraordinary creatures that the Attorney-General in Committee found it so difficult to defend, the assessors, which I venture to say he must have attacked robustly in the privacy of Government counsels. These are blemishes, but, on the other hand, here too I find an element of the Bill which is not devoid of merit.
  The Under-Secretary, in his enthusiasm, congratulated his colleagues upon

  475
  their courage and vision in bringing forward the proposals of the Bill. He even congratulated them on the Race Relations Act. What he ought to have done was to congratulate the Conservative minority on the Standing Committee which introduced the enforcement provisions of the Race Relations Act of 1965. It was a Conservative invention based largely on American experience. When the Government introduced that Bill they introduced it with criminal provisions. It came back from Standing Committee with conciliation and injunction machinery which came from us. I do not see why we should not claim credit for it. It am not claiming it exclusively, but the hon. Gentleman's praise was exclusively devoted to his own side and I think that we, too, are entitled to a little bit of the praise.
  That leads me to the crux of the matter. On Second Reading, I supported, I hope with some force, a reasoned Amendment which said that, on balance, the Bill would do more harm than good. This is obviously a difficult judgment to make as a whole. I wholly disagree with those of my hon. Friends who ay that it is in ail respects the same Bill. I have not pretended to remind the House of the phrase which my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall) reminded the House of and which I used on Second Reading. This is not a repetition of the history of the Race Relations Bill of 1965. The changes have not been fundamental here as they were then, but it would be a great mistake, in my judgment at any rate, to described them as contemptible or insignificant simply because they were not fundamental.
  A new assessment clearly has to be made as to the balance, and it is a more difficult balance to draw. If I were to rest solely on that limb I am sure that I should be spending a great deal of the House's time, and I do not wish to do so, because I must point out that there are other differences between the situation on Second Reading and the situation which we now face. The Motion is different on Second Reading. We had the rational and frequently debated option of a reasoned Amendment, and we took it. We inquired whether that option was a reasonable option
  476
  on Third Reading. The conclusion we arrived at was that it was neither reasonable nor intelligible. It is within the rules of order, so I am informed, but in 30 years' experience of the House I cannot readily recollect a single instance where it has been taken.
  Now, we have to choose between a direct vote for or a direct vote against, and I am reluctant to ask my party to give a direct vote against the Bill. Had that been the option on Second Reading, I should have taken the same view as I am taking now. If I had had to choose on Second Reading in the light of my then speech either to vote for the Bill or to vote against it, I should have refused to vote. As it was, I had another option and I asked my hon. Friends to take it.
  But if my hon. Friends ask me what has changed since then, then I am bound to say that one thing that has changed has been my fundamental assessment of the Bill, which is that it is a matter to be discussed rationally in the light of the social context in which we are placed and in the light of its probable consequences, and not in a mood of bad temper or emotionalism. That is not the only thing that has changed. In my judgment, the social climate has also changed since Second Reading. This is where an element of instinct must come in, but I am not entering into the criticism that has been made on the benches opposite of the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I said all I had to say about that on Second Reading.
  I would only add, with some seriousness of mind and purpose, that I have been rather perturbed by some of the manifestations of public feeling which have taken place since Second Reading. If I had to vote against the Bill, I would have found it very much more easy to do so on Second Reading than I would now. It is a matter of the highest importance, both for the House and the country, that the rather ugly manifestations of feeling that have taken place should not be associated with in any way by any hon. Member. I am not associating myself in any way with the criticisms, which were wholly unjust, in The Times leading article. But whether the criticism is just or unjust, it would be difficult—one would spend a great deal of time doing this—to explain away

  477
  a straight vote against the Bill as not being associated with that kind of feeling.
  Hon. Members: Rubbish.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The debate has been placid so far. There is no reason why it should not remain so.
  Mr. Hogg: My hon. Friends are perfectly at liberty to disagree with me, but I am entitled to express my opinion. I have served my party for 30 years—
  Mr. Jennings: So have we.
  Mr. Hogg: —and I have given up what I believe to be a promising professional career and I have abandoned a great hereditary position. I am not now going to be put down from saying what I believe it is my duty to say by unmannerly people who cannot hear views different from their own in silence. I ask my party to agree with me.
  4.30 a.m.
  Mr. Callaghan Mr. Callaghan rose—
  Mr. John Wells: On a point of order. I beg to move, That the Question be now put.
  Mr. Speaker: I am not prepared to accept that Motion now.
  Mr. Callaghan: It falls to me to say the last word, and I do so willingly. I am proud to take part in this debate, because whatever agreement or disagreement there may be with the views expressed by the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg)—I completely understand his emotion and that of those who may oppose him—the fact remains, as hon. Members will acknowledge, that in his speech, and in the speeches of others, such as those of the hon. Member" for Paddington, South (Mr. Scott) and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. John Hall), we have heard the accents of truth, sincerity and principle.
  At a time when politicians of all shades are under considerable attack for falling below the level of events, we can be proud of the kind of debate that we have had. It has taken place in the early hours of the morning, but it has certainly been none the worse for that. Indeed, in my view it has been all the better for it. I speak of the generality of the debate. We have listened with great attention and very great care for
  478
  99 per cent. of the time. Irrespective of whether we agreed with them or not, we respected the views put forward. I want to state my attitude, because I think that this is a very great occasion. When introducing the Bill I had read a great deal of the debates which had taken place before and what had been said by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues. Although I hope that I am as good a party man as any, I was determined to make this as far as possible a bipartisan approach. I am not ashamed of that. I believe it to be the right approach on this issue. I prepared a Bill which, although it fell short of the expectations of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, nevertheless, as I saw it, was based on a consensus of view in the House and would, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman adjures us, not antagonise the people of this country, but carry them with us.
  On Second Reading, the right hon. and learned Gentleman put a number of questions and considerations to me. The particular points he put were about the position of the small employer, the position of the person who let his house or a part of it, about the owner-occupier who sold his house without recourse to an estate agent, who had a private transaction, and the position of the small landlord. I say this to those who criticise the right hon. and learned Gentleman. It is not for me to defend him; he probably can do that better without my help. In his reasoned Amendment he asked the Government to consider these points. All of them have been considered and changes in the Bill have been made on all of them. They may be changes which some people will find more palatable than others. I did it in pursuance of my very strong desire that the House of Commons, in so far as it is possible, should unite in this novel declaration of principle. I say this to those who have criticised the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I have endeavoured, not to his utter satisfaction, to meet the points that were made.
  I really believe that it is more important to have a united House of Commons on this issue than it is to satisfy any desire to exploit party fissures or to attack each other's lack of principle and bona fides in this matter. I appeal to the House very sincerely tonight. I know

  479
  there are some who feel bound to vote, but I ask the House to let us have, if possible the Third Reading of the Bill without a Division. It could be the greatest and most unanimous declaration that could be made.
  In the light of the nature of the deliberations we have had, in the light of the fact that the official Conservative Opposition does not propose to vote against the Bill, I think that the time has come when we should proceed with the discussions in the all-party committee I proposed when making my Second Reading speech. The nature of our discussions and the Bill which has emerged are of such a character that we should now begin, all parties in the House, to foresee the operation of the Measure, as I trust it will emerge from another place, and the other issues which concern race relations.
  Therefore, I shall be approaching once more the right hon. and learned Gentleman—he gave me a reply last time which was favourable, but he said that he wished to reserve his position—and the Liberal Party to see if we can establish this committee now. I have the deepest and most profound conviction that the path of happiness and the health of our society lies on the declaration of principle that, whatever view we may take about people coming into this country, once they are here they must be treated as equals.
  This is what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) could do to help. I take the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). I intended to say something about it, but I will not pursue it, because my hon. Friend made it clear. The right hon. Gentleman has a responsibility to make a distinction, if he believes in a distinction, between his views on the number of people coming to this country and the treatment of those who are already here. He is at the moment associated with opposition to the Bill. He is also clearly associated with a desire to prevent any others from coming here.
  I would take the view that the integration, absorption and assimilation of the million new citizens we have got here is of greater importance to the health of our community than the unlimited entry
  480
  of new migrants. A very difficult balance has to be held. But the right hon. Gentleman, who has the ear of the country on this question of race, has now the responsibility for making his position clear, not on migration, but on the question of the Bill. I regret very much that he has not attempted to intervene in any of our debates to make his position clear.
  If there is one picture that will live in my memory, as I imagine that it will in the memory of every Member, it is the picture of the Palace of Westminster surrounded by good, decent British working-men jeering at the High Commissioner for Kenya because he was of a different colour. There must be a terrible gap, a terrible lack of education which I cannot believe that the right hon. Gentleman can defend. He cannot defend that kind of approach; and he has a great responsibility, because he has the greatest influence of anybody with the people of this country at the moment, because of the views he has expressed. He has a responsibility to make it clear that, no matter what the colour of a man's skin is, when he is in this country he should be treated equally with everyone else. It is the right hon. Gentleman's responsibility to begin to damp down the flames that he has stirred. I leave the right hon. Gentleman with that, but it is something that he should reflect on very seriously indeed.
  As regards the Bill itself, there are four questions. Is it necessary? Will it make things worse? Is it practicable0 Is it enough? I answer those questions quite simply in this way. I believe that the Bill is necessary for the reasons expressed by many hon. Gentlemen, including the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Summers) and the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone. There are, I regret to say, a number—and a growing number—of examples of discrimination, particularly in the fields of employment and housing. It is, in my view, and in the view of the great majority of the House of Commons, therefore necessary to declare that in a society in which we wish to live this discrimination shall be made unlawful.
  Secondly, will it make things worse? This is the view which is taken by some hon. Gentlemen. We cannot forget history on this. The history of the matter

  481
  is that, when the Race Relations Bill, 1965 was introduced, great changes were made in it, but I do not think that I do the hon. and learned Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) an injustice when I say that on Third Reading he said—I have not checked my memory on this and I am willing to withdraw this if he says that he did not say this; if he did not, others did—that the operation of the 1965 Act would make matters worse. That is precisely the criticism which is being uttered about this Bill at this time.
  I think that anybody who has studied this matter will have no doubt that the operation of the Race Relations Act, 1965, has improved race relations in the limited fields in which it operated. There may be some who will disagree about that. I can only say that they are in a substantial minority on that matter. Therefore, if we may judge from the history of previous legislation—and I am entitled to draw a conclusion from it—it is at least as likely that the Bill will make things better as it is that it will make things worse; and I myself would put it much higher. I think that there is a very strong prospect that it will improve matters rather than make them worse, for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Paddington, South. I found more hope in the hon. Gentleman's approach and in his speech than I did in all that much publicised postbag of the right hon. Member for Wolverhamp-ton, South-West.
  Then, is it practicable? I think that the answer to that is, Yes, despite the fears of the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Evelyn King). He referred to the millions of people in employment, but that is one reason, a very important reason, why I wanted to use the machinery of the trade unions and of the employers, the voluntary machinery which now exists, which, extending over
  the whole field, at present operates for the millions of people to whom he referred. The individual grievance today is taken up—millions of them, if the hon. Gentleman likes; the individual grievance today is solved; and we are using exactly the same machinery in this very important field. Therefore, I take the view that, although there are bound to be difficulties in this matter, the machinery is practicable, and that it can be made to work if it is used with vigour.
  Then the question is asked: is it enough? No, it is not enough. I should be out of order if I were to state now the other things which are necessary to make the Bill succeed, but I have never pretended that legislation on its own will solve this very great problem with which everyone in the House is faced. There are, clearly, other measures which are necessary, but to which I will not now refer.
  Therefore, in commending the Bill to the House for Third Reading, I appeal, as strongly as I can, to every Member in the House, no matter where he may sit, to allow it to go forward. I believe that the arguments which have been put against it, sincerely held though they are, are not sufficiently strong to justify the House in being divided on a fundamental issue of human principle and human equality like this. For the sake of the House, for the sake of the country, for the sake of the 50 million of our own people in this country as well as the million immigrants we have here, the coloured citizens we have living here, for the sake of all of us, I beg right hon. and hon. Members to give the Bill an unopposed Third Reading.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time: —
  The House divided: Ayes 182, Noes 44.

  Division No. 274.]

  AYES

  [4.42 a.m.

  Abse, Leo

  Baxter, William

  Brown, R. W. (Shoreditch &F'bury)

  Allaum, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Buchan, Norman

  Alldritt, Walter

  Blackburn, F.

  Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)

  Anderson, Donald

  Blenkinsop, Arthur

  Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James

  Archer, Peter

  Booth, Albert

  Cant, R. B.

  Armstrong, Ernest

  Boston, Terence

  Carmichael, Neil

  Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)

  Bottomley, Rt. Hn. Arthur

  Chapman, Donald

  Atkinson, Norman (Tottenham)

  Boyden, James

  Coe, Denis

  Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

  Coleman, Donald

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Bray, Dr. Jeremy

  Concannon, J. D.

  Barnes, Michael

  Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)

  Cullen, Mrs. Alice

  Barnett, Joel

  Brown,Bob(N'c'tle-upon-Tyne,W.)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)

  Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)

  O'Malley, Brian

  Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire,W.)

  Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)

  Orbach, Maurice

  Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)

  Hughes, Roy (Newport)

  Orme, Slantey

  Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)

  Hunter, Adam

  Oswald, Thomas

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Jackson, Colin (B'h'se & Spenb'gh)

  Palmer, Arthur

  Davies, Ifor (Gower)

  Janner, Sir Barnett

  Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)

  Dell, Edmund

  Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas

  Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred

  Dewar, Donald

  Jeger,Mrs. Lena (H'b'n & St.P'cras,S.)

  Pentland, Norman

  Diamond, Rt. Hn. John

  Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

  Rees, Merlyn

  Dobson, Ray

  Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)

  Richard, Ivor

  Dunnett, Jack

  Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

  Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St.P 'c' as)

  Dunwoody, Mrs. Cwyneth (Exeter)

  Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W.Ham,S.)

  Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)

  Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e)

  Judd, Frank

  Rose, Paul

  Eadie, Alex

  Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)

  Ross, Rt. Hn. William

  Edwards, William (Merioneth)

  Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)

  Ryan, John

  Ellis, John

  Lee, John (Reading)

  Shaw, Arnold (llford, S.)

  Ennals, David

  Lestor, Miss Joan

  Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton.N.E,)

  Fernyhough, E.

  Luard, Evan

  Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)

  Fletcher, Raymond (llkeston)

  Lubbock, Eric

  Silverman, Julius

  Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

  Lyon, Alexander W. (York)

  Slater, Joseph

  Foot, Rt. Hn. Sir Dingle (Ipswich)

  Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)

  Small, William

  Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Spriggs, Leslie

  Ford, Ben

  McBride, Neil

  Steel, David (Roxburgh)

  Forrester, John

  MacColl, James

  Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley

  Fraser, John (Norwood)

  Macdonald, A. H.

  Swain, Thomas

  Freeson, Reginald

  McGuire, Michael

  Taverne, Dick

  Galpern, Sir Myer

  Mackenzie, Alasdair(Ross &Crom'ty)

  Thomson, Rt. Hn. George

  Ginsburg, David

  Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)

  Urwin, T. W.

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.

  Mackintosh, John P.

  Varley, Eric G.

  Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony

  Maclennan, Robert

  Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

  Grey, Charles (Durham)

  McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)

  Watkins, David (Consett)

  Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

  McNamara, J. Kevin

  Weitzman, David

  griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)

  Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)

  Wellbeloved, James

  Griffiths, Will (Exchange)

  Mahon, Simon (Bootle)

  Wells, William (Walsall, N.)

  Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

  Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.)

  Whitaker, Ben

  Hamling, William

  Marks, Kenneth

  White, Mrs. Eirene

  Hannan, William

  Marquand, David

  Whitlock, William

  Harper, Joseph

  Mendelson, J. J.

  Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick

  Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

  Mikardo, Ian

  Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)

  Haseldine, Norman

  Millan, Bruce

  Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)

  Hazell, Bert

  Miller, Dr. M. S.

  Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Milne, Edward (Blyth)

  Winnick, David

  Hilton, W. S.

  Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)

  Winstanley, Dr. M. P.

  Hooley, Frank

  Molloy, William

  Woof, Robert

  Horner, John

  Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)

  Yates, Victor

  Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)

  Morris, John (Aberavon)

  Howell, Denis (Small Heath)

  Moyle, Roland

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Howie, W.

  Murray, Albert

  Mr. Ernest G. Perry and

  Hoy, James

  Newens, Stan

  Mr. Ioan L. Erans.

  NOES

  Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch

  Bitten, John

  Hordern, Peter

  Ridley, Hn. Nicholas

  Biggs-Davison, John

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Ridsdale, Julian

  Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Russell, Sir Ronald

  Body, Richard

  Kerby, Capt. Henry

  Sandys, Rt. Hn. D.

  Bullus, Sir Eric

  Knight, Mrs. Jill

  Taylor, Edward M.(C'gow,Cathcart)

  Burden, F. A.

  Longden, Gilbert

  Teeling, Sir William

  Campbell, B. (Oldham, West)

  Maginnis, John E.

  Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek

  Cordle, John

  Maude, Angus

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Craddock, Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Mawby, Ray

  Williams, Donald (Dudley)

  Cunningham, Sir Knox

  Maydon, Lt.-cmdr. S. L. C.

  Woodnutt. Mark

  Drayson, G. B.

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Errington, Sir Eric

  Murton, Oscar

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Goodhart, Philip

  Nabarro, Sir Gerald

  Mr. Ronald Bell and

  Goodhew, Victor

  Neave, Airey

  Mr. Harold Gurden.

  Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

SCHOOL, GREAT DUNMOW
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Harper]
4.50 a.m.
Mr. Peter Kirk: I apologise for detaining the House just a little longer at this very early hour of the morning, and apologise to the right hon. Lady for asking her to stay here to answer this debate because of the short notice I was able to give her about it.
The subject I wish to raise, though not of the wide-ranging importance of that we have been discussing, is, nevertheless, of very great importance to large numbers of my constituents. It concerns the rather complicated story of the secondary school at Great Dunmow, a story which I have tried to unravel myself and which I hope the right hon. Lady can asist me in unravelling a little further.
The school was built on this site in 1958, and was finally completed with a four-form entry for 600 children in 1960. It soon became apparent that a school of this size would not be able to serve the expanding needs of the area, and by 1964 the report of Her Majesty's inspector showed that the number of school children stood at 643, the lowest figure for that year, and that in September, 1964, it was expected to have risen to 720. The inspector said this was well outstripping the accommodation, and that the school would also be subject to still greater pressure as increase in entry advanced. So, three years ago, it was obvious that the school was already overcrowded, and likely to get more overcrowded as time went on.
It may well be asked why nothing was done about it. The story was that when the previous Government announced their provisional intention to expand the airport at Stansted, their provisional plan contained a lateral runway which had nothing to do with the two parallel runways—later the subject of discussion—and that this lateral runway would have ended just outside the back door of the Great Dunmow school.
The local authority rightly thought in these circumstances that it was not possible for it to consider an extension to the school, but the lateral runway was dropped from the airport plans, and, in
486
consequence, there appeared to be no reason why an extension to the school should not go on.
It was decided by the county council to increase the school to a six-form entry instead of a four-form entry, thus providing another 200 places which it was felt would cope with the expected expansion. But when the matter was looked at again in relation to the capital programme for the school year 1967–68, as I understand the plan was then that this extension should be taken into consideration with the proposal to raise the school-leaving age, and that the school should be expanded to eight-form entry with 1,320 pupils, at a cost of£142,445. Then there is the raising of the school-leaving age, which was dropped. The situation now appears to be that no proposal whatsoever exists in any capital programme to expand the school.
I had a Question to the Secretary of State on 27th June. The right hon. Lady told me:
"We are unable to authorise this school to start this year because of the prior claim of schools to meet more urgent needs. We will be ready to consider it for the 1969–70 programme but I cannot say at this stage what the outcome will be."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th June, 1968;Vol. 767, c. 800.]
When I asked what were the more urgent needs, all I got was a helpful answer, which did not answer my Question, telling me how much Essex had spent on education. I am not quarrelling with the county council, which has done the best it can. It keeps putting the school in the programme, and the Ministry keeps taking it out. I want to ensure that the school goes into the programme and stays there.
What puzzled me about the right hon. Lady's reply was that I had already received a letter from her on 19th March this year in which she said:
"The Essex education authority have submitted the project in their revised proposals and have assured us of the urgent need. We shall certainly consider it for inclusion in the review programme for 1968–69, but I cannot yet say what the outcome will be."
Only three months later she was saying that it is not in the 1968–69 programme and does not know whether it will be in the 1969–70 programme. What happened between March, when we were to consider it for 1968–69, and 27th June, when we cannot even be definite about whether it will be considered for 1969–70?

487
The right hon. Lady should be clear what the situation in the school now is. Her Majesty's inspector, in 1964, noted that by September of that year the school would have 720 pupils, well outstripping the accommodation. In February this year it had 748 pupils, 148 more than is provided for. In September, this year's entry will raise the number of children to 804. Two classes are now being taught in demountable classrooms, some classes have occasionally to be taught in the corridors, two classes are being taught in a disused, substandard, abandoned primary school five miles away, sixth-form work is being done in a caravan provided by the parents of some of the children, and one class is being taught in the staff room. The right hon. Lady tells me that there are more urgent cases in Essex. I should be interested to hear where in rural Essex there is a more urgent one.
The prospect, therefore, is of another 60 children coming in this September and raising the total from 748 to 804. I do not think that this is a situation which can be allowed to run on with merely the prospect that perhaps there will be a chance of getting something in the estimates for 1969–70. I urge the right hon. Lady to realise that there is no alternative relief available. All the neighbouring secondary schools at Braintree, Chelmsford and Saffron Walden are full and cannot take any more children from Great Dunmow. In July this year the new sewerage works in the area was complete, with the result that new residential development over the whole area, particularly at Great Dunmow and the neighbouring villages of Felsted and Barnston, held up for 10 years, will go ahead, and so pressure on the school will grow even heavier.
While it is too much to expect the right hon. Lady to tell me any definite news tonight, I hope she will realise the extent of the urgency of the school situation and perhaps press upon her Department the need for some fairly rapid action. Otherwise, the school will simply burst at the seams.
5.0 a.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Miss Alice Bacon): The hon. Gentleman the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Kirk) has
488
described the position at the Great Dunmow secondary school and I know that the conditions are broadly as he stated. The extension of this school from a four-form entry school to a six-form entry school at a cost of£166,000 was included in the 1967–68 building programme. School building programmes are reckoned from 1st April to 31st March and since this school was included in the 1967–68 programme it was open to the Essex authority at any time between 1st April, 1967, and 31st March, 1968, to start the school. But this it did not do.
In January, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced the postponement of the raising of the school-leaving age, the object of which was to save the money which was to have been spent on buildings for that purpose in the next two years. Local authorities had been allocated£36 million for each of the years 1968–69 and 1969–70, but this was partly offset by£7 million in each of the two years to help with secondary reorganisation.
Every year, local authorities have a building backlog of schools which have been in the previous year's programme and which for some reason they have not managed to start. This school was in the 1967–68 programme and could have been started by Essex at any time during that year. But the position was altered by the effect of having to take away the money which had been allocated for the raising of the school-leaving age.
It was clear that, unless we had taken some action, the local authorities would have been able to build as much from their backlog as the Government were saving by postponing the raising of the school-leaving age. So the Department issued a circular saying that those schools which were not started by 31st March, 1968, would have to be resubmitted for the 1968–69 programmes. Since about£29 million had to be taken out of the building programme which had already been allocated for 1968–69, it was only right that local authorities should be given a chance to state their priorities in the light of the new circumstances.
As I have said, Essex could have started this school at any time up to 31st March, 1968, but it did not do so because

489
it was not ready to start and it therefore had to take its chance in the 1968–69 building programme. The local authority included the school in its revised proposals, but not as No. 1 priority, for 1968–69 as being justified in terms of meeting urgent basic need and as being essential to secondary reorganisation in the area.
But I must stress—and this to some extent answers the hon. Gentleman's queries—that when we considered these proposals, together with the proposals from the rest of the local authorities in February, it was doubtful whether the school would be ready to start within the programme year—that is, up to spring, 1969. The sketch plans had not been completed so that the timetable for the subsequent planning and tendering stages to allow a start before 1st April, 1969, was very tight.
The hon. Gentleman asked what school was more urgent. We had to survey the whole country and there were some schools of equal urgency where the local authorities were ready to go ahead at once. These other schools were just as urgently needed and could certainly start before the Dunmow school could start and they had to be given priority. If this school could not have been started, say, until about February, 1969—I am merely using this date as an example—the difference between it being in the 1968–69 programme and the 1969–70 programme could probably have been only a matter of two months.
The authority has been invited to submit its proposals for schools to start in the 1969–70 programme. If it includes this school, and it probably will, its claims for a place in the programme in terms of meeting basic needs will be carefully considered, but, of course, we have to survey the whole country, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would expect me to go further than that tonight. However, as the secondary reorganisation scheme approved for the area envisages an intake in 1969, the school may also be eligible for a share of the special£7 million added to the 1969–70 programme to help reorganisation.
Again, I say that when we were considering it in the light of the£7 million for the 1968–69 programme, we had to bear in mind that it was not ready to start, whereas other urgent projects in
490
the rest of the country were ready to start immediately. This school can, therefore, be considered on two counts. If it is included, a start can be made early in the programme year beginning April, 1969, and little time will have been lost, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will realise that I cannot give any assurance at this time.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that in my answer I referred to what Essex was getting. Essex is getting a total of£2 million worth of starts in 1968–69, with 15 primary and seven secondary schools. These were the schools submitted by the Essex authority. I am pleased that tonight the hon. Gentleman has stated his case fairly and has not sought to make capital out of the general school building position. I should like to tell the House that a very great deal of school building is going on. In 1964, the value of school building projects under construction in England and Wales was£145 million; on 1st January, 1968, it was£152 million; and on 31st March, 1968, it was£193 million, so that nearly£200 million worth of school building is going on.
I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are going on with this large school building programme and that Essex is getting a fair share. We have considered the Dunmow proposal. I know the difficulties there. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman any specific assurance for the future, but I think that he will realise what I meant when I talked about more urgent projects. There were those which were ready to go ahead immediately, whereas the Dunmow school was not. It was placed in the 1967–68 programme, which shows that the Stansted development had nothing to do with it. We put it in the programme, but for some reason, probably beyond the control of the Essex authority, it was not started before the deadline of 1st April, this year, and that meant that it had to be considered in next year's programme.
It was doubtful that it would be able to be started before nearly the end of the programme year; but we shall soon be considering proposals for the 1969–70 programme and I cannot go further than that this evening.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes past Five o'clock.

GAS
  North Sea Gas, Bristol Area
  North Sea Gas, Bristol Area
  Natural Gas Exploration, Bristol Channel
  Natural Gas Exploration, Bristol Channel
  North Thames Gas Board (Consumers' Accounts)
  North Thames Gas Board (Consumers' Accounts)
COAL
  Pit Closures
  Pit Closures
ELECTRICITY
  Preservation of the Countryside
  Preservation of the Countryside
  Seaton Carew (Proposed Power Station)
  Seaton Carew (Proposed Power Station)
MINISTRY OF HEALTH
  Prescription Charges
  Prescription Charges
  Addictive Drugs
  Addictive Drugs
  Dental Treatment (Silver Alloy Cost)
  Dental Treatment (Silver Alloy Cost)
  E.C.10 Prescription Form (Wording)
  E.C.10 Prescription Form (Wording)
  Chemists (Free Medicines)
  Chemists (Free Medicines)
HOSPITALS
  St. Thomas's Hospital, Stockport (Nurse Recruitment)
  St. Thomas's Hospital, Stockport (Nurse Recruitment)
  Intensive Coronary Care Units
  Intensive Coronary Care Units
  Nurses Agencies
  Nurses Agencies
HOUSING
  Rate Rebate Scheme (Aged and Infirm Persons)
  Rate Rebate Scheme (Aged and Infirm Persons)
  Council Houses (Cost)
  Council Houses (Cost)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
  Rock Ferry By-pass, Birkenhead
  Rock Ferry By-pass, Birkenhead
  Rate Support Grant
  Rate Support Grant
  Housing Subsidy, Liverpool
  Housing Subsidy, Liverpool
  Small Shopkeepers (Compulsory Acquisition)
  Small Shopkeepers (Compulsory Acquisition)
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Government Offices (Cleaning Services)
  Government Offices (Cleaning Services)
  Prices
  Prices
COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
  Gibraltar
  Gibraltar
  Balance of Payments
  Balance of Payments
  Northern Ireland Banks (Assets)
  Northern Ireland Banks (Assets)
  India (Naga Peoples)
  India (Naga Peoples)
  Falkland Islands
  Falkland Islands
HOME DEPARTMENT
  Visitors (Admission)
  Visitors (Admission)
  British Standard Time
  British Standard Time
EMPLOYMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY
  Steel Industry (Union Representation)
  Steel Industry (Union Representation)
  Mentally Handicapped (Sheltered Workshops)
  Mentally Handicapped (Sheltered Workshops)
OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT
  Commonwealth Countries (Pensions and Compensation Payments)
  Commonwealth Countries (Pensions and Compensation Payments)
TECHNOLOGY
  Nuclear Power Programmes (Uranium Supplies)
  Nuclear Power Programmes (Uranium Supplies)
  BALTIC BONDHOLDERS
  BALTIC BONDHOLDERS
  PRIME MINISTER OF GREECE
  PRIME MINISTER OF GREECE
AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD
  Canned Meat Imports
  Canned Meat Imports
  Cyprus Potatoes
  Cyprus Potatoes
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
  B.A.O.R. (Winter Clothing and Equipment)
  B.A.O.R. (Winter Clothing and Equipment)
EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
  Schools Council (Sub-Committee)
  Schools Council (Sub-Committee)
  Scottish Students (Accommodation Cost)
  Scottish Students (Accommodation Cost)
  School Building Projects
  School Building Projects
  Expenditure, Wales
  Expenditure, Wales
  City University (Engineering Faculty)
  City University (Engineering Faculty)
  School Building, Inner London
  School Building, Inner London
  Secondary Reorganisation Plans, Reading
  Secondary Reorganisation Plans, Reading
POST OFFICE
  Two-tier Postal Charges
  Two-tier Postal Charges
TELEPHONE SERVICE
  Applicants, Calne Area
  Applicants, Calne Area
SCOTLAND
  Civil Defence
  Civil Defence
  English and Welsh Students (Accommodation Charges)
  English and Welsh Students (Accommodation Charges)
  Ayrshire Hearing Aid Clinic (Waiting Period)
  Ayrshire Hearing Aid Clinic (Waiting Period)
  Geriatric Beds, Ayrshire
  Geriatric Beds, Ayrshire
  British Standard Time
  British Standard Time
  Dentists (Disposable Syringes and Needles)
  Dentists (Disposable Syringes and Needles)
  Local Authority Rent Schemes
  Local Authority Rent Schemes
  Education and the Countryside
  Education and the Countryside
SOCIAL SECURITY
  Expenditure, Wales and Monmouthshire
  Expenditure, Wales and Monmouthshire
BOARD OF TRADE
  Council of Industrial Design (Grant)
  Council of Industrial Design (Grant)
  Proposed Bank Mergers (Monopolies Commission Report)
  Proposed Bank Mergers (Monopolies Commission Report)
WALES
  Llangollen Eisteddfod Fund
  Llangollen Eisteddfod Fund
  Housing (Expenditure)
  Housing (Expenditure)
  Cardiff—Merthyr Trunk Road
  Cardiff—Merthyr Trunk Road
  INDUSTRIAL REORGANISATION
  INDUSTRIAL REORGANISATION
ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
  Regional Development
  Regional Development

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Blackburn

CHILDREN'S ANORAK CORDS
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that at least four young children have died during recent months from strangulation by the strong cords in the hoods of their anorak garments and that a number of others have narrowly escaped death during play; whether their attention has been called to the urgent advice of hospital doctors that all parents should at least remove immediately the toggles on the cords and preferably replace the nylon cords by light tape; and whether, since large numbers of these garments are worn by children and sold by many stores, they will support the request of the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents that the British Standards Institution should examine this matter urgently.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, I have read the reports of these tragic accidents with deep regret. Three of them occurred when the cords on the hoods of the children's anoraks became trapped on joints or other parts of the slides on which the children were playing. In the fourth case, the child's anorak hood became caught on barbed wire at the top of a garden fence. The Home Office has already asked the garment manufacturers, as a matter of urgency, to consider adopting certain safety modifications proposed by a consultant pædiatrician. In addition, the British Standards Institution are reviewing the British Standard for children's slides. Meanwhile, I would urge parents to
790
adopt the safety precautions proposed by my noble friend, that is, to remove the toggles and to replace the nylon cord by very light; tape: this, preferably, should not be threaded right round a e hood, but stitched to the front of it on each side.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that Answer, which is satisfactory at least so far as it goes? May I ask him if he would be good enough to inform me what the consultant pædiatrician reported?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the consultant pædiatrician at the Derbyshire Children's Hospital suggested that draw cords around the hoods of children's anoraks should be abandoned, that the breaking strain of the cords should not exceed 5 lb. and that the cord should simply be sewn on the side of the face-piece without taking it right round the hood.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend again for that helpful answer? May I ask him whether he is aware that one great firm, the head of which is a Member of this House, were good enough to take all the toggles off in one day and subsequently redesigned their anoraks, and whether he is aware that others are not doing that? Would my noble friend take the necessary steps to further impress upon the trade that they must do this or alternatively the Government will take further steps?
LORD STONHAM: My Lord;, I am glad that Marks and Spencer have produced an elasticated face-piece and also, much more important, that they have given instructions for all toggles to be removed from the cords of anoraks for children aged three to ten. I hope that other retailers will follow suit.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, while that is very good so far as British manufacturers are concerned, may we have an assurance from the Government that they will stop the importation from Hong Kong and other places of anoraks made in this way with toggles?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I cannot give an assurance that we will stop the importation of anoraks, but we have already been in touch with the Hong Kong Government Office and have asked

791
them to draw the attention of manufacturers there to the modifications which we insist should be made in the interests of safety.
LORD CROOK: My Lords—if your Lordships do not mind my persisting; I have been following this question for some months—my noble friend referred to the British Standards Institution. Is there now a specification? If so, is that about to be altered? Is any action being taken and is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, with which I am connected, taking any action to help?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords ROSPA has approached the women's panel of the British Standards Institution. I understand that there is no British Standard for anoraks, but if the B.S.I. decide to produce a standard for anoraks I am sure that it must include safety factors of the kind we now have under consideration.
LORD CROOK: May I thank my noble friend.

FATSTOCK GUARANTEE SCHEME PAYMENTS
2.41 p.m.
LORD ALLERTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government—

1. Whether it is possible to improve the method by which the second payment under the 1967–68 Fatstock Guarantee Scheme is made;

2. What is the cost of sending out the numerous small cheques which are sent out under present arrangements.]

LORD BESWICK: My Lords, we have carefully considered the possibility of improving the method of second payments which may become due to presenters of cattle or sheep under the Fatstock Guarantee Scheme. Unfortunately the cost of linking the individual transactions
792
throughout the year, so as to make it possible to pay by a single cheque to each presenter, would be nearly double that under the present arrangements, which amounts to some £64,000.
LORD ALLERTON: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask him whether he would not agree that there must be something wrong with a system under which eight cheques, varying in amount from 8s. 7d. to £1 7s. 9d., are sent to pay a total sum of £7 5s. 5d.? This has been my own experience, and I understand that it is not at all unusual.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I agree that there is something wrong with the present system, but there would be even more difficulties, and they would be costly difficulties, under any conceivable alternative. This year payment was a particular nuisance because the total sum for presenters for second payment was small. But I am given to understand that the National Farmers' Union have looked into this and are satisfied that the present arrangements are the most economic that can be devised.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for his second answer, may I ask him whether he is aware that, while I warmly support the idea of payment on account, when the system becomes so tenuous that eight payments have to be made, it really makes it look ridiculous. It is hard to believe that the system could not be improved. Would he not agree that further thought should be given to this matter?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, the difficulty here, I understand, is that of registration of what I have called the presenters. The trouble is that at least a quarter of them are middlemen and wholesalers, and it is not easy to maintain throughout the year the type of register that would be necessary. But if the noble Lord has any bright ideas, I can assure him that we should welcome them.

INVERGORDON DEVELOPMENT AND LAND RECLAMATION
2.44 p.m.
LORD BURTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, in view of the report of Mr. W. Munro, Q.C., to the Secretary of State for Scotland on the proposed developments at Invergordon recommending that no time should be lost in making a survey of the possibility of reclaiming of Nigg Bay for industrial use, what action they have taken, or propose to take, on this recommendation.]
TILE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SCOTLAND (LORD HUGHES): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has drawn the attention of Ross and Cromarty County Council to Mr. Munro's recommendation, and they will no doubt include it in their consideration of the long-term pattern of land use in the area in the light of the Holmes Group Report.
The noble Lord will also probably be aware of the announcement at Inverness yesterday, on behalf of the Highlands and Islands Development Board, that they are to make preliminary surveys into the potential for reclamation in various parts of their area. I have no doubt that they will bear in mind Mr. Munro's recommendation.
LORD BURTON: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lard for that reply, may I say that I am not sure whether I showed him this answer in the Scotsman, or whether he leaked it to the Scotsman yesterday.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the first part of what the noble Lord says is perfectly correct. The noble Lord did draw my attention to the report in the Scotsman. The answer to the second part of the noble Lord's observation is that I did not leak anything to the Scotsman either yesterday or at any time in the past. I hope that I shall not do anything of that kind in future.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, would the appropriate department of Her Majesty's
794
Government copy this excellent enterprise of the Scots and, now that the cost of land is so high, make a survey of British coastal areas which could be reclaimed? If the Dutch can do it, we can do it.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I have no doubt that if the noble Lord puts down a Question on that subject some other Member of Her Majesty's Government will give him a reply.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, if this reclamation of the seashore proves to be successful in Scotland, would my noble friend seriously consider applying it to the coast of Essex when he comes to consider the question of Stansted Airport?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I thought that my previous Answer made it clear that the responsibility of the Scottish Office does not extend so far South.

TRANSPORT BILL
2.45 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY of PUBLIC BUILDING AND WORKS (LORD WINTERBOTTOM): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 71 [Control of the use of large goods vehicles]:
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 204.
Page 103, line 16, at end insert—
("() In granting a special authorisation the licensing authority may attach a condition permitting the authorisation to be transferred to one or more other persons.")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 204. The object of this Amendment is to enable a licensing authority who make a special authorisation to permit the transfer of such an

795
authorisation to another haulier, for it is in effect the traffic that is being authorised or licensed rather than the haulier. Under the Bill, the consignor, or the haulier with the consignor's support, already has to prove that a particular traffic can be moved more efficiently by road than by rail. Therefore, once the decision is made and the special authorisation granted, there would appear to be no logical reason why there should be any concern about the particular road vehicle used or which user or haulier undertakes the carriage of the goods.
My Amendment seeks to provide this desirable flexibility. If one haulier can satisfy the licensing authority regarding speed, reliability and cost of transport for some particular long-distance traffic, there is no reason why another haulier should not be able to achieve the same target or performance. Apart from this, to my way of thinking, desirable flexibility, time and money could be saved, for a manufacturer might employ several hauliers for a certain type of traffic. With the possibility of transferability, only one application need be made instead of several. This transferability would eliminate the possibility of a farcical situation arising where the haulage contractor may be fully committed on a particular day and cannot, therefore, carry the traffic of a particular manufacturer. This is a point that I mentioned on the Second Reading of the Bill. With the transferability of the authorisation, a manufacturer will be able to take advantage, without unnecessary procedure and delay, of hauliers' vehicles which are looking for return loads. Also it would have the effect that the number of emergency applications would be considerably cut down. For the reasons I have just given, I beg to move the Amendment.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, is equating the traffic with the haulier. I wonder whether that is correct. We had a debate earlier, in this Part of the Bill, on the principle of quantity licensing, and it is perhaps a fortunate fact of life that not all people are equally competent; some hauliers are better than others. Under the Bill a haulier will be granted a licence. But the grounds for granting a special authorisation are that the applicant's road ser-
796
vice is superior to rail in terms of speed, reliability and cost. That is why he gets it. If authorisations, once granted, were transferable, they might fall into the hands of an operator whose service was not superior to rail in all these respects and who would not have been granted an authorisation had he applied directly to the licensing authority. This would be the situation: "A" would get it; "B" would not. This would weaken the system.
The procedures for obtaining special authorisations are not complicated and unopposed applications will be granted at once. There is also provision in Clause 75 for expedited grants of special authorisation in cases of emergency. This would be the situation. Shall we say that "A" dies; his widow sells the business and "B" takes over and "B", I am certain, would get the expedited grant of special authorisation, particularly in a situation where the railways in the previous application had not objected or if their objection had been lost on appeal. Absence of any right to transfer licences should not therefore lead to any considerable inconvenience or delay. This is what the Government believe.
The noble Lord will perhaps agree that there is nothing new in preventing the transfer of licences. Section 179(2) of the 1960 Act forbids the transfer or assignment of "A", "B" and "C" licences except in special cases—for example, death or bankruptcy of the holder—for which regulations may provide; and Clause 86 of the Bill is based on this provision. I think that the point the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, has raised is an important one, but I think it is true to say that the authorisation is granted to an applicant and not to a business. But if the new applicant for the same business is a man who is known to be competent, or can prove to the licensing authorities that he is competent—particularly if in the past no opposition has been raised by the railway authorities or others —then I feel that no difficulty will arise from a reapplication for a new special authorisation.
LORD MERRIVALE: I thank the noble Lord for his reply. I should have I thought, though, that in effect safeguards

797
could have been provided to ensure that "A" haulier, "B" haulier or "C" haulier, were of similar competence. The noble Lord also referred to expedited applications. This Amendment, if accepted, would in effect to some extent do away with, or reduce, the number of demands for an expedited application. But there is one point I should like to ask the Minister to consider. It is that because special authorisations will not be transferable from one operator to another, a separate authorisation will be needed by each individual haulier whom a transport user may from time to time employ, and each separate application will involve the user in supplying the haulier with information and in being ready, in case of objection by the N.F.C. or the Railways Board, to support the haulier with detailed evidence of the comparative benefits of the rail and toad alternatives. That is a point which the noble Lord did not cover in his original reply, and perhaps he might feel that on this latter point there is something further he could say.
LORD WINTER BOTTOM: I suppose that the situation which the noble Lord is putting forward to the Committee is the situation wherein, during the period of a licence, which may have run for three years, circumstances have changed. Shall we say that "A" has died and his widow wants to sell out to "B". Is the noble Lord considering a situation whereby the actual criteria of speed, reliability and so on, may have altered in the period between the granting of the authorisation and the transfer of the licence?
LORD MERRIVALE: No; I am considering a case where the manufacturer may have to deal with an extra one or two hauliers.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I understand the point of the noble Lord. I made a specific statement on behalf of my right honourable friend, and that is that in this particular case there is provision in Clause 75 for expedited grant of special authorisation in cases of emergency. Let us conceive of a firm which is using a certain haulier for its work, and for one reason or another this haulier goes out of business—he may die or anything may happen. But the customer, as I said earlier, is always right.
798
This is the basis of this particular clause of the Bill. I should have thought that the customer who had goods moved from his factory could in a case like this demand an expedited granting of a special authorisation to the new haulier who was proposing to take over or to the same haulier's business which had been taken over by someone else. This is a new concept which must be run in, and I think the noble Lord is quite right both to air this point and to alert the Ministry of Transport to the tact that a situation such as this might arise. But I think we are fully aware that situations like this can arise, and the expedited machinery under Clause 75, I am certain, would come into effect in these circumstances.
LORD MERRIVALE: I will not press the point any further. I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he has Just said. The only point where I think we differ is this. The noble Lord and the Government believe more in the existence of an expedited procedure being available, while I and the Transport Users' Joint Committee believe that there would be greater advantages in transferability.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Further information has just reached me, but could the noble Lord finalise his statement?
LORD MERRIVALE: I thought that the noble Lord had received a further note and had something further to add.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I have something rather interesting to add, but perhaps we could deal with it on the Motion, That Clause 75 stand part of the Bill. That might be helpful.
LORD MERRIVALE: I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
2.59 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 205:
Page 103, line 30, at end insert—
("It shall be the duty of each Licensing Authority to make recommendations to the Minister as to the classes of vehicle, as indicated in subsection 5(a)(ii) or as to the classes of goods as indicated in subsection 5(b), which shall be prescribed.")
The noble Lord said: I beg leave to move Amendment No. 205 standing in

799
my name. A number of industries are making representations to be exempted, in view of special circumstances, from the provisions of subsection (1) of this clause, as provided by subsection (5) which gives power to the Minister to make regulations to that effect in the case of a certain class of vehicle or class of goods. The purpose of my Amendment is to save time, for there are certain industries, or classes of vehicles, which by their very nature will always be more than likely to be granted applications, and therefore in their case the Minister would prescribe an exemption. By this Amendment I am asking that their special circumstances should be analysed beforehand by the licensing authorities. This provision should assist the Minister to reach a decision. Otherwise on what basis will he decide whether or not to exempt some particular industry? It is really on this point I am mainly moving this Amendment. I beg to move.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord has raised the point, if I have grasped his intention correctly, that there are certain kinds of vehicles which from the nature of things will always be exempt. I think that in an earlier debate on Clause 71 vehicles for china clay transport were mentioned.
LORD MERRIVALE: And certain industries.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Those are in fact certain industries, are they not? I think this again is a commonsense proposal, but we believe that it is already covered by the Bill. Before making any exemption regulations under subsection (5) the Minister is required by Clause 90 (8) to consult with such representative organisations as he thinks fit—I mean organisations like the National Farmers' Union, the China Clay Association and so on. These consultations will give interested parties a chance to make their views known.
But the Minister is not limited to taking advice only from representative organisations. He can consult with anyone who in his opinion could contribute to the discussion. Obviously licensing authorities will come into that category, not only when the specific question of exemptions is being considered but also generally about the way the licensing
800
system is operating. Indeed, as was pointed out in another place by my honourable friend the then Joint Parliamentary Secretary, the licensing authorities now take the opportunity in their annual reports to the Minister of commenting on aspects of the licensing system if it seems to them appropriate, and this will of course continue. There is a constant flow of information from the authorities to the Ministry about the working of the system. So we believe it is inappropriate to put a statutory duty on licensing authorities to make recommendations on a specific point to the Minister. They are doing so at the moment. If the noble Lord will be so kind as to raise the point on the Motion, That Clause 71 shall stand part I should like to make an important point which was missed because a certain Amendment fell without being moved.
LORD MERRIVALE: I am grateful to the noble Lord for that last remark. He does not feel that there should be a statutory requirement on the licensing authorities to analyse the various representations made. In that case, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.4 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 71, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD MERRIVALE: I am not quite sure what type of statement the noble Lord has in mind, but if he will make it I shall be delighted.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Really we are talking about simplifying the whole procedure and clearing out of the way at an early stage of the introduction of the operation of this Bill certain fields where in fact authorisations will be granted automatically and without any argument. There is a wide field where I am certain this will happen. My right honourable friend has already in mind that furniture removals, livestock, and traffic within and between offshore islands, and in particular the movement of roundwood, should be exempted from the machinery of quantity licensing, and this is the position before the Bill has become an Act and has come into operation. If this can be a token of future intentions I hope the Committee will accept it. We have said at an earlier stage

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of the discussion, on the Part V Amendments, that we want to make this Bill work. Constant reference to specialised vehicles will not make it work. I think I can give the noble Lord the assurance that we shall be sensible on this matter.
LORD MERRIVALE: I thank the noble Lord for his remarks and for stating specifically the type of goods that will already be exempt from the Bill. If I understood him aright, in the regulations to be laid later there will be further exemptions.
LORD BURTON: I should also like to thank the Minister for the statement on goods to be exempted. I think it is disappointing that Amendments 202A and 203 were not moved. It may be felt that the Amendment we made to this clause on Wednesday night was adequate. I suspect, however, that this Amendment will not be acceptable in another place, and I feel that this clause should be further amended in detail in this House before we leave it. The noble Lord, Lord Arwyn, made a plea for the exclusion of china clay. I am sure that we on this side all agreed with him, but equally sure that we should not agree that china clay has any grounds for priority over agricultural produce, or fish, or any other perishables; and probably not over a good many other commodities as well.
We were grateful for small mercies extended in another place, as we were for the statement we had just now, and also for the extension of the 100-miles limit of radius, as opposed to where the lorry drives. But these points do not appear to be written into the Bill. I appreciate that they may be met by order by the Minister later, but a great many people would be happier if at least the question of the working out of the 100-mile limit were written into the Bill. I hope that before the Report stage the noble Lord will have further discussions with his friends in another place and will be able to persuade them to be rather more generous than they have been so far.
I understand it is the Government's hope that 10 per cent. of the road traffic will he transferred to the railway. I do not think they have ever denied that this will raise the cost of transport generally. I wonder how much of this 10 per cent. is, in any case, Government-controlled.
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I suspect that quite a large proportion of the traffic concerned is coal and steel, and that could be transferred without all this machinery. Also I would like the noble Lord to consider the position of foodstuffs. I think they might come under the general category of perishables. But if they are not exempted, it will of course put up the cost, and that will automatically put up the cost of living generally. I feel that this point should be looked at in more detail before Report stage.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: May I ask the noble Lord one question? Is it not possible that industries situated in the extreme North of Scotland might suffer considerably under the provisions of this clause? I have in mind two in particular; one, the glass factory, Thurso Glass, situated at Wick, and the other the A.E.I. factory, which makes electric bulbs, situated at Buckie. If these are not exempted, as they may be, it seems to me that they will suffer considerably from the clause.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: May I turn first to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde? I think he is worrying unduly about the situation of the firms he has mentioned. There are three freight liner terminals in Scotland, all of them a long way from the factories he mentioned, if my knowledge of the geography of Scotland is correct. Therefore I believe that the licensing authorities will not make any difficulties whatever for those firms. As I have said repeatedly, we hope to administer this Bill in a sensible way. We are not forcing people to transfer their goods to rail if the criteria that we have laid down in Clause 74(5)—speed, reliability and cost —are not met. Since, unfortunately, due to the problems that Scotland faces, the railway network is not as wide as in England I am quite certain that the licensing authorities to whom these firms will turn, or to whom their transport contractors will turn, will not in fact be stupid; they will make certain that the goods are transported in the most efficient way possible, efficiency being interpreted in the widest sense.
LORD STRATHCYLDE: I thank the noble Lord.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: To reply to the noble Lord, Lord Burton, taking his

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last point first and working backwards, he raised the question of cost. I thought I tried to answer that on Amendment No. 202. I may not have convinced the noble Lord, but I did my best. I think we all accept that there will be some rise in cost. But we believe that the total cost to the nation will in fact, owing to the more efficient operating of the railways, be lessened by this procedure. History will prove it, but I believe that what I have said will be so; otherwise I should not be arguing it to-day.
Again, if we turn to the movement of steel, or of iron ore and coal, of course the noble Lord is right. I should not like to think that we are controlling the noble Lord, Lord Robens; but perhaps we may have some influence on his thinking; certainly the licensing authorities have the authority to influence him. I should imagine that these important bulk loads which are ideal for the railway system will go on to the railways, by which in the main they are now being transported, except in times of railway crisis such as the one we have just experienced. So again the Government will play their part; of that I am quite certain.
To move back a stage further in the noble Lord's argument, and relate this to the Amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, which was not moved, again the Government have given their undertakings in the field of livestock. If it is felt that the movement of broccoli from Cornwall to London, for instance, is done more efficiently by road transport straight from the farm to Covent Garden, then I am certain that the licensing authorities will be convinced by the argument. We are not going to be doctrinaire. We do not want truck loads of broccoli standing in a siding on the way to London. No doubt that would lead to their decomposition. So this is a factor that will be argued with the licensing authorities, and I am certain that they will be easily convinced. I hope that I have answered the points raised by the noble Lord.
EARL BATHURST: In regard to the important pronouncement that the noble Lord has made, in particular to round-wood, about which I must declare an interest, can the noble Lord say that it will be possible for these bulk carrying
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lorries, and also the type of lorry carrying the broccoli which he has just mentioned, to obtain a return load free of licensing, because so often it is the return load which makes possible the economy of the transport concerned—in fact the whole profit on the load? Will the noble Lord give sympathetic consideration to this problem? It may not be relevant to this clause or this Amendment, but it is a most important point for forestry owners and for perishable produce deliverers.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, made this a strong point of the argument which he addressed to Amendment No. 202. This is something of which I know from personal experience. In Nottingham I had on my doorstep a strong branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union, and when I referred to freebooting I was thinking of the situation where lorry drivers, quite properly, look out for return loads when they have come to London from some remote part of the country. Under the new Bill return loads will be subject to quantity licensing and this, I should imagine, must affect the total cost of operation. I think the points made by noble Lords are valid in this case. We must see what the impact of this is in practice. I can only tell the Committee what is the intention. Return loads are a matter which I think must be worked out in practice, which cannot be ignored but which are subject, as I must tell the Committee, to quantity licensing.
Clause 71, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 72 agreed to.
Clause 73 [Objections to grant of special authorisations]:
3.16 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD moved Amendment No. 205A:
Page 105, line 24, after ("Act") insert ("forthwith").
The noble Viscount said: It may be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak in general to all my Amendments. I should like to move them en bloc, because the overall object of the Amendments is to speed up the whole procedure for the granting or refusal of special authorisation by a licensing authority.

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As the Bill is drafted, it is unnecessarily tardy. It could take well over a month, indeed up to 40 days, for the applicant for a licence to receive his authorisation, or indeed to have it refused.
We must remember that it is essential for industry to keep its costs to a minimum. Anybody who has exported anything knows that of equal importance is the necessity for a reliable and punctual delivery service. This is particularly important for our major export industries and for the heavy capital goods industries. Manufacturers of plant for the steel and non-ferrous metals industries have an output of £100 million a year. A high proportion of this is sold abroad. These manufacturers of plant are also key suppliers to the steel industry. As we all know, competition abroad is extremely acute, especially in the heavy plant industry, which includes electrical capital goods. The important thing in exporting is to keep to delivery dates. If you do not you will lose exports and will probably be subject to a penalty clause. It is therefore essential that there should be no undue delay by licensing authorities.
My experience is that local bureaucrats can be worse even than Whitehall. I rather fear that the growth of local bureacracy in this licensing procedure will result in great delays. For instance, as I have already said, it will certainly take over a month to obtain permission to send a load by road rather than by rail, or even by sea. Even if you then obtain permission, British Railways and the National Freight Corporation will have the right to appeal. This will presumably hang matters up still further. The trouble is that you cannot always tell. You might apply for a licence in regard to supplying some goods perhaps three or four weeks in advance, because you would know roughly when you are going to export them or when your customer wants them. But there are certain occasions when you will not know the exact date that the goods are required. They may be required in a great hurry, and then it is of course essential to speed up this process. Neither can the exact date when the goods are ready for transportation always be known. Many loads require transportation at very short notice. For instance, it has now become the fashion to have this "roll-on, roll-off" service. I cannot see how this can really
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work with the delays as at present in the licensing system, because with the roll-on, roll-off service it is not really practicable to have forward planning of transport, and it is not therefore practical with this type of load, if you have the long procedure of this licensing system.
When we come to abnormal loads, we all know that the railways cannot handle them, but I am afraid that the licensing authority may decide that some abnormal load could be sent by rail, that could be taken to pieces and then be reassembled on the site. With the technical processes of manufacture to-day, it would be quite impracticable to reassemble these loads on the site; therefore, they have to go by road. I can give your Lordships plenty of instances where heavy loads have gone by rail or by sea and the cost has been far greater than by road.
LORD LEATHERLAND: I wonder whether the noble Lord would pardon me. He talks about these cargoes going by sea and he thought they might be transported cheaper by road. How do you get a lorry sailing across the Channel?
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: As the noble Lord has asked it, I will give him an instance of some goods that went by sea. The Ministry of Transport recently refused permission for a heavy load to be transported by road; it had to be sent by sea. Of course, it was sent by road to the port of shipment, which was only a few miles. The total cost was £4,500, but of this £4,000 was the cost of the sea voyage down the coast. The transport by road would have cost £750. The firm giving that estimate is a firm called Ashmore, Benson, Pease and Company, Limited. I think I have answered the noble Lord in that example, and I could give him others, but I shall spare him that embarrassment.
I should be only too pleased to explain any of the Amendments in detail, but of course they are all the same in that they speed up this whole process of licensing. For instance, take Amendments 205B and 205C. When the body objects to the application for a licence for special authorisation, there is no reason why at the time of making the objection a statement should not be made as in paragraph

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(a). There is equally no reason why the body should not submit a copy of the statement to the applicant. These Amendments try to speed up the process. I need not explain them any further than by saying that they are all for completely the same purpose. I would end by saying that it is of real importance, if you export anything, to speed the transport up, and I am afraid as the Bill is drafted transport will be retarded. I beg to move.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Before I answer the general argument of the noble Viscount, may I clear up one point? He mentioned "roll-on, roll-off" traffic, and my noble friend Lord Leatherland suggested that there were other ways of moving besides "roll-on and roil-off". The position is, and I said something like this rather earlier in to-day's discussion, that a journey involving a "roll-on, roll-off" ferry journey to Northern Ireland or to places abroad will be exempted from quantity licensing. What I said earlier was that the traffic between and within offshore islands will be exempted. I am not certain if Europe is an offshore island of this country, or if we are an offshore island of Europe, but whichever way it is the traffic is exempted from quantity licensing.
The noble Viscount has raised a point which enables me to state the view of the Government, which is in strong sympathy with what he has had to say. I do not quite know how the noble Viscount envisages the changeover from the present system of licensing to the system of quantity licensing, but I, at least, would have felt that there could not be a day when we change from the old system to the new one just like that. There must be a tapering in and a tapering out. Since the operation will be carried out by the same licensing authorities one can assume that, as sensible men dealing with the same problem, they will, in fact, produce sensible solutions. That is a hope, but I am certain it is not an irrational hope.
The noble Viscount expressed a fear that a new bureaucracy, not central but regional, would be created. Well, of course, the bureaucracy already exists. It is experienced and has a good reputation. We have, I think from the early 'thirties, attempted to control commercial
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traffic on the road, and the same forms of machinery will be applied to it from now on as have been applied to it in the past. I think it is true to assume that sensible men will produce sensible solutions. But the Government have sympathy with the noble Viscount's Amendments. This is in complete line with our thinking. I give him the assurance that the Government have very much in mind the need for speedy dispatch of business by licensing authorities. This is obviously necessary. If some awful day should arrive when the old system stopped and the future one began, but nothing happened for a month, this country would be in a pretty pickle, and we all recognise this. We are aiming at the same objectives. If this Bill passes into law there will be a period between the date of its passage into law and the appointed day when this Part of the Bill comes into effect. In this interim period regulations and procedural matters will be subject to prior consultation with interested parties under Clause 90(8). These matters will have to be laid before the House, so that one can assume that a proper transition period will take place in plenty of time.
May I point out one or two objections to the noble Viscount's Amendment? Amendment 205C would require the railway objector to send a copy of the detailed statement of the grounds of his application before the applicant has to submit his own detailed statement in support of his application. The noble Viscount may remember that during the period of adjudication by the licensing authorities neither side knows what the other is doing; only the judge, as it were, knows. Therefore, Amendment 205C would cut across this procedure. If one takes Amendments 206C and D, these assume that in every case where an objection is made a public inquiry will be held by the licensing authority, but Clause 73 specifically provides that the licensing authority may in appropriate cases grant an authorisation forthwith, having considered the objector's statement, without an inquiry being held. This is a speeding-up procedure of the sort which the noble Viscount wants. This provision is designed to enable applications to be dealt with as speedily as possible. In other words, the noble Viscount's Amendment would in these

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cases be harmful to the applicant's interest by preventing the immediate grant of the authorisation, which we want to see. We are all working in the same direction, and for this reason I hope that the noble Viscount will withdraw his useful set of Amendments.
LORD STRABOLGI: Before the noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, withdraws these Amendments, may I say that, although I agree with my noble friend Lord Winterbottom that they contain possible defects, there is a great deal in what the noble Viscount puts forward. I support the Bill, particularly Part V, and I agree with my noble friend that we have to see that it works, because the principles of it are right. On the other hand, I agree that there is a very important omission from this clause, and I wonder whether the Government would have another look at the point. The only time limit in the clause is that contained in subsection (3), which requires the objecting body to give fourteen days within which to lodge an objection. But there is no time limit within which the licensing authority must hold a public inquiry. There is nothing in the Bill to stipulate that the licensing authority should carry out their duties expeditiously. We know that most local authorities carry out their responsibilities efficiently and quickly, but there is a risk that there may sometimes be difficulties at local level. One must always take into account the human factor, since we are all fallible.
If it is not possible for safeguards of this kind to be written into the Bill, could not something be put into the regulations; or would the Government have another look at it to see whether there could be some time limit within which an inquiry should be held? Otherwise there will be a risk, if the licensing authority is not as efficient as it should be, that there will be considerable delays. I understand that industry is worried about these aspects, and it would do a great deal to assure industry, particularly that part of industry which is dealing with export orders, if it were known that this procedure would be carried out as efficiently and as quickly as possible. I would welcome any assurance which my noble friend can give that the Government will look carefully into this matter.
LORD HURCOMB: I appreciate the apprehensions of the noble Viscount about the possibility of undue delay, but I venture to doubt whether, in dealing with an administrative tribunal like a licensing authority, one effects very much by saying that they must do this or that forthwith, or within seven days, or within fourteen clays, or whatever the period is. One knows from experience that if unduly short time limits are imposed it almost always leads to difficulties and hardships from somebody's point of view.
The second point I would ask the noble Viscount to consider is the fact that this particular administrative machine now has nearly 40 years of experience behind it. I remember the very heavy burdens which were imposed on the licensing authorities when they first attempted to introduce order into the public passenger transport side of the problem. There were then very serious delays: everybody objected, everybody appeared by counsel, and argued for days on every conceivable point. But that was a long time ago, and I submit that these particular branches of the local bureaucracy (if one likes to call them that, by way of prejudice), have shown a very acute sense of the necessity for meeting the convenience of those who appear before them and whose business is affected by their decisions, and the convenience of the public. They have shown a keen sense of the interests of those people and have not been complicated, cumbersome or obstructive in their machinery. I suggest that they should be left to use their administrative experience and discretion, with perhaps a reminder from the Minister or Members of this House if, for some reason or another, they appear to be becoming unduly dilatory.
3.37 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: As I understand it, the transitional provisions are laid down in Clause 93, and they enable the licensing authority to get into their stride under the Bill, if that should ever arise. We do not believe that the system is in any way workable, but if they are to get into their stride at all, they will get into their stride under the transitional provisions. I take it that my noble friend is concerned with what happens after that in relation to the applications which arise

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for business which is not at present being done—that is to say, where it is new business and the transitional provisions do not apply.
Attention has been drawn by the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, to the dangers if unduly short time limits are imposed. I do not know whether the noble Lord thinks that these are unduly short. As I tot them up, these provisions will mean something like a maximum of 36 days. I should not have thought that it would be possible to do it in very much less than that. On the other hand, my noble friend thinks that it should not be done in more time than that. A period of 36 days is a long time for this kind of irregular application to take. If this is the lowest maximum that can be imposed, I cannot agree that this is an unduly short time limit. It pinpoints how very cumbersome and delaying the whole procedure is going to be.
LORD HAWKE: I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government are again trying to kill two birds with one stone, which does not always pay, as they were doing on the question of trying to make the same rules apply to the road hauliers as to the service fleets of private firms, as I pointed out at an earlier stage of the Bill. The time limit seems to be perfectly normal and reasonable for a person who proposes to set up a continuing operation, but I cannot see why something quicker cannot be produced for one journey only.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I think discussion in this House has the purpose of bringing to the notice of the Government of the day the problems which arise from their legislative proposals, and the points raised by the noble Viscount and by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, are worth making. It seems that what is concerning noble Lords opposite is that new applications for authorisation to carry unusual loads which require to be transported in a hurry might be held up, and that industry or commerce might suffer as a result. That fear was expressed by my noble friend Lord Strabolgi. But I think the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, has really answered the question for me. We are not introducing a completely new procedure. All the matters which we are talking about now are dealt with by
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the regulations under the 1960 Act. That may not be the most perfect system conceivable, but it works and I see no reason why we should change it.
I shall certainly consider the point made by my noble friend, that the only mention of time is the 14 days in Clause 73(3). But the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, has pointed out that in certain cases haste is not a help, and, since we are speeding up the procedure in Clause 74, I am certain that in the transitional period, and also when the system is run in, the circumstances envisaged by noble Lords will be dealt with by existing regulations. I do not see why this should not work. It is helpful to the House that this risk should be brought to the notice of the Minister of Transport, but I do not think it is a general objection to the Bill.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I draw his attention to the very narrow way in which Clause 75 is drafted so far as the grant of special authorisation in cases of urgency is concerned? To succeed in his application, a person must be in a position where he could not have foreseen the circumstances anyway.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I give an undertaking to the noble Lord that I will answer this point at the Report stage of the Bill.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I feel that I should thank the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for struggling to answer on the problems that arise out of Clause 73. I do not wish to disturb the tranquil atmosphere of the Committee by repeating the arguments that were used the other night. As my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn has said, we think that this Part on quantity licensing is completely unworkable. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, referred to the anxieties of industry. The anxieties of industry go far and wide, and industry does not believe that this scheme can possibly work. I feel that the references by the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, to the competence of the Traffic Commissioners really did not relate to this situation. The Traffic Commissioners are, of course, first-class officers and their admirable administration is both fair and expeditious. But here they are being asked to embark on a task which the Almighty himself could not undertake, and that is our objection.

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My noble friend asked a question about return loads, and the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, was good enough to confirm unequivocally that the return load has to get a special authorisation. What could be more ridiculous than that? How can anyone predict what the situation will be, where the load will go to, what it will be, or anything about it? This is just typical. However, I do not wish to weary the Committee with arguments which we have used before. I simply want to thank: the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for what he said and tell him that we just remain unhappily unconvinced.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: thank the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for agreeing with me that speed is essential for these special authorisations. I take the points he made about the Amendments, and I agree that perhaps some were not very well drafted. But I am extremely pleased to have heard the Minister say—I never heard him say it previously; otherwise I should not have alluded to it—that the "roll-on and roll-off" loads will not come under this clause. That is excellent because it is not practicable to have forward planning for such loads. It appears that the Government realise the necessity for speed in this matter, but the question is: will they themselves amend the Bill accordingly at Report stage? I can only hope that they will do so in order to try to speed up the whole process, because 36 days is too long for efficient working. With those words, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.47 p.m.
LORD MOTTISTONE LORD MOTTISTONE moved Amendment No. 206H:
Page 107, line 4, leave out ("partly") and insert ("mainly").
The noble Lord said: It may be for the convenience of the Committee to discuss this Amendment with Amendments Nos. 205AA, 205CA and 206J, as they all make the same change. Last Wednesday night it was suggested by noble Lords opposite, perhaps somewhat intemperately, that the Road Haulage Association had a big hand in what was said from these Benches. I must say before I start that I have been assisted in bringing forward this Amendment by
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the Multi-Shops Federation. It is significant that that is a different organisation, in that it represents the major groups of chain stores in this country and, in particular, the users of road transport. So it can therefore be said to consider the use of road transport purely on its commercial efficiency.
This small Amendment, to change the conditions under which an objection can be raised from "wholly or pertly by rail" to "wholly or mainly by rail", is designed to allay the fears of people operating or using transport that rail transport over quite short distances will be used as an excuse for a successful objection to a licence for a route. Such an objection would have two effects. One is that it may reduce the efficiency of the transport system. I am sure the Minister will say that this is well dealt with by Clause 74(5), particularly if it is amended. But it is perhaps worth remembering, that when people whose bread and butter is in the successful distribution of goods consider their transport systems, they must find the most efficient way. It is more important to them, perhaps, than to anybody else. It is only by efficiently using their transport system that they can give value for money to the consumer. Therefore, any way in which their choice of route can be messed up (if one may put it that way) by some other organisation with different interests will probably make for less efficiency. If it comes about—and I know that as a result of last Wednesday's debate we hope it may not—that this bias towards the railways goes through, it still means that these subsections as worded will give enormous strength to the objectors, whether they be the National Freight Corporation or the railways.
The other point to make, perhaps, is that if a user of transport is forced, because there is only a tiny part of his route which is best done by rail, to use rail for that part of the route, it may well not be worth his while to operate his own fleet of large goods vehicles. One can perhaps put it that the cream of his routes will be taken from him by the process of licensing and objection, and it will not be worth his while operating his fleet for what remains. This will then very much reduce the flexibility of his operations as a whole This applies particularly, of course, to large

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firms who have subsidiaries all over the country or shops all over the country, and it is for them particularly that it is necessary to move the weight of the ability to object slightly towards their favour by putting "mainly" instead of "partly" into the subsections under consideration. I beg to move.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord who has spoken has asked us to substitute a bias towards the roads in this case for a bias towards rail. Really, this is what the argument on this group of clauses is all about—or, indeed, what the argument on the Bill is all about. I think the noble Lord was absolutely right to mention to your Lordships that some of the ideas which he was putting forward had perhaps been inspired by the Multiple Shops Federation, but that does not make the argument any less valuable, because we are airing a problem here. In fact, the Federation has, of course, already discussed this with the Ministry, and it seems they have not been satisfied. But we find it rather difficult to understand why the Federation believe that the Amendment is necessary. It seems that they fear that quantity licensing will result in the refusal of special authorisations, which would be against their commercial interests, and that they want to shut out rail alternatives when rail forms only a minor part of the total journey. The noble Lord quoted Clause 74, subsection (5), as the sort of argument which I was going to put forward, and indeed I am.
I believe that this system will not work unless the customer is always right. The customer's arguments are very carefully considered by the licensing authorities, and although, quite honestly, a bias towards rail does exist in this Bill, for the social reasons which have been stated by my noble friends and myself, this will not weigh unduly on the people who have to decide whether or not special authorisations should be granted. We would ask your Lordships' Committee to reject this group of Amendments because they would place an unnecessary and undesirable limitation on the right of British Railways and the National Freight Corporation to object to applications and on the licensing
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authority's discretion in deciding disputed cases. We want the licensing authorities to have freedom of decision in this matter. The criteria on which they must judge is laid down in Clause 74, subsection (5), and I am certain that, particularly in the transitional period—this was the point made by the noble Viscount and others in our discussion a few moments ago—they will act in such a way as not to disrupt existing patterns of traffic. But over a period they may reconsider the routing; and, while accepting the bias towards rail, I am certain that the licensing authorities will exercise their powers sensibly.
The fact that these fears have been aired in this debate must be noted by my right honourable friend and must be considered by him when he starts drafting the Orders that relate to the operation of the Bill. The only assurance I can give the noble Lord is that the regulations will be drawn up sensibly, and that the operation of the Act, as it will then be, will be carried out sensibly; but I believe that his attempt to shift the bias away from the railways and towards the roads in this particular case is unreasonable, and for that reason we oppose the Amendment.
LORD SOMERS: I wonder whether there could not be some regulation introduced into the Bill to make it possible for transport which is wholly within a single firm to be at the choice of that firm. Take, for instance, a multiple-store firm such as Marks and Spencer, who have branches all over the country. It will add to their expenses enormously if they have in some cases to use rail transport and in others possibly the roads. I should have thought that when it was entirely within their own business they should have been able to choose the transport that was most efficient for them.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: That strikes me as an entirely rational approach, and I will see whether I can give the noble Lord an assurance at the Report stage of the Bill.
LORD MOTTISTONE: I understand the approach of the Minister to the problem, though it is unsatisfactory. What is unsatisfactory is the imprecision of the word "partly". I must say that I spent some time with a dictionary trying to

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improve on it, because I could see that "mainly" was not going to be acceptable to him, but there does not seem to be a suitable adverb which comes between. But there is this imprecision, and the fact that if you happen to be a user, a non-Government body, you look at this in a totally different way from the Government body concerned. Their bias is towards rail, but they must look at things in a different kind of way. So it is very important that when you end up with an adverb like "partly", the people who are operating the licensing system do their own biasing back again towards "mainly". I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.58 p.m.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM LORD WINTERBOTTOM moved Amendment No. 206:
Page 106, line 24, leave out ("a public") and insert ("an").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 206, but I shall speak to No. 210 and No. 211 as well. The effect of these Amendments would be to permit any party interested in an application for either an operator's licence or a special authorisation to request a hearing in camera before a licensing authority or, on appeal, before the Transport Tribunal. It would, however, remain in the discretion of the licensing authority or the Tribunal, as the case may be, to determine, in the light of the particular circumstances, whether it be right to grant the request. The Amendments are designed to give effect to undertakings given by the Government in another place. Both the Opposition and the spokesman of the Liberal Party had represented that, particularly Clause 62, subsection (4), in relation to operators' licences, and Clause 74, subsection (5), in relation to special authorisations, might require firms, especially those wishing to carry goods in their vehicles, to disclose financial and commercial information which might be of value to their competitors. The Government recognise the force of this argument and that is why these Amendments are now being proposed. Amendments Nos. 178, 194, 206, 210 and 220 remove the requirements that all inquiries should be held in public. Amendments Nos. 179, 195
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and 211 are merely consequential drafting improvements.
The first new subsection, Amendment No. 221, prescribes that except where regulations governing the conduct of cases before the licensing authorities provide otherwise, inquiries shall be held in public. It will therefore be possible to make regulations permitting the licensing authorities to hold hearings in camera if they consider it appropriate. The Transport Tribunal will be able to make a similar provision by amending their rules of procedure. The advice of the Council on Tribunals and the Lord Chancellor's Office was that it would be preferable to provide for hearings in camera by regulations or procedural rules other than by substantial provision in the Bill itself.
Finally, Amendment 221, the second new subsection, strengthens the policy still further by making it an offence in certain circumstances to disclose information provided by a firm during hearings in camera, notably if the firm has not given its express permission for this.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 73, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, one question? The noble Lord made a very forthcoming answer to the intervention by my noble friend Lord Somers. Lord Somers asked whether it would be possible to exempt from this procedure a transport fleet already engaged on carrying the freight of the firm in question. He put his case cogently and I entirely agree with him. The noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, received this suggestion as being entirely reasonable. He told us that he hoped on Report stage to give a helpful answer. I hope that he will. But is he aware that of the 100,000 heavy freight vehicles which would be affected by quantity licensing this would release 60,000?
Nobody would be more delighted than myself. This really is making progress. What I thought would be a debate which was not going to give us very much is really giving us great encouragement indeed. My noble friend Lord Hawke

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has continually pointed out the impossible situation in which the "C" licence fleets will find themselves. I am delighted. I should be glad if the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, would confirm that this is what he meant.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I will not say that the noble Lord is trying to trap me; but he is trying to make me say more than I did. I thought that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Somers, was a valid one requiring an answer which I undertook to give at Report stage. The hard facts of the situation are that under Clause 74(5) if rail added to the cost of transporting groups of goods within an organisation's own network of companies, then special authorisations would be granted for the fleet of vehicles carrying the goods. I suspect that the costings of Marks and Spencer are accurate and precise and that they will be able to convince the licensing authorities (if the case is as I stated) that they can move their own goods more reliably, cheaper and faster with their own fleet than if forced to move them on to the railways.
This is the whole basis of the argument. The noble Lord must not ask me to go further. I undertook to give the noble Lord, Lord Somers, a specific statement on Report. I know what is in the mind of the noble Lord. I should have thought that reasonable men dealing with an existing situation would not try to distort an existing pattern of transport. I have explained clearly—and the Committee knows—the intention of the Government. I will not go further than that to-day. I or one of my noble friends will give the noble Lord an answer at the Report stage.
EARL BATHURST: Is it not an extraordinary thing that the noble Lord can give voice to such encouraging expressions to Marks and Spencer's and, no doubt, to many other enormous concerns? Can he not say that he will also let the small man off the hook? Noble Lords on that side should be looking after the small people. The noble Lord now makes encouraging noises on behalf of the great industrial concerns, helping operations in their favour, to the detriment of the smaller companies whose goods may be just as
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important as those of the great concerns. It is a most extraordinary situation.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: I will not delay the Committee. Will the noble Lord, instead of merely giving an assurance that he will look at it again, make a statement on Report giving an assurance that he will introduce an Amendment to put the matter right?
LORD WINTER BOTTOM: I cannot give that assurance, but I should like to answer the point made. The noble Lord, Lord Somers, did not specifically mention Marks and Spencer's. He gave it as an illustration. I am only repeating what I have said throughout the Bill. The intention of this particular piece of legislation is to help the railways while safeguarding the interests of the customers. Noble Lords opposite argue that this is not possible, or is possible only to a limited degree. This is what we are arguing about. I am satisfied that both the large groups of firms and the small groups will be treated judiciously and sensibly by the licensing authorities after the appointed day. I will try to spell it out to the noble Lord at Report stage. I cannot do more than that at present.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: What use is it to a court of law if all that we are going to have is an assurance from the noble Lord that he will look at it? We require that it be written in the Bill.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The assurance I gave was that I shall say something more specific on Report stage. This is not committing the matter to "Never-never land"—I shall do so on Report stage.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I thank the noble Lord for answering the point on Clause 73. The fact is, as noble Lords know, that it is the intention of the Government to get a switch of 10 per cent. from road freight to rail. The anxiety of the whole of the industry is that nobody knows which 10 per cent. it is going to be. This will mean completely reversing the whole transport arrangements of the country. Everything the noble Lord has told us has further convinced us that the system is completely unworkable.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before leaving this clause, may I ask the noble Lord whether he will tell us about subsection (6)? Subsection (5) states that the factor relevant for making the comparisons mentioned in subsections (3) and (4) shall be speed, reliability and cost. Subsection (6) then says that in assessing the factors mentioned in subsection (5)—speed, reliability and cost, and other relevant factors —the licensing authority shall act in accordance with any directions contained in regulations made by the Minister. Why is it necessary for the Minister to give directions to the licensing authorities on how to exercise their judgment in assessing these comparatively simple things—speed, reliability and cost? One can only presume that they are going to be directed not to take into account this, that and the next factor—things like goods lost on the way, people going on strike and so on.
What is the purpose of this provision? Why cannot this be left to the licensing authority? If I may say so, it seems to be somewhat of an affront to Parliament that Parliament should be asked to pass legislation of this kind without knowing in any way what directions are to be given to the licensing authority. Why is there a secret about it? Why cannot the noble Lord put it in the Bill? Why should there not be a Schedule showing what are the directions. This really is an affront to Parliament.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: It is no affront to Parliament. It is an attempt to solve a very complex situation which concerns everyone. Subsection (6) mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, is designed simply to enable the Minister to ensure that the factors will not be narrowly defined. After all, we have here three words with which we are trying to define the criteria on which the licensing authority will decide—speed, reliability and cost. As the noble Lord probably knows, when lawyers get busy, words get distorted. If we find that these words are being too narrowly interpreted, the Minister has power to spell out their meaning. The power to make regulations is designed to allow the Minister to spell out more clearly and in more detail than is possible in the Bill precisely what is meant by speed, reliability and cost. It will not allow him to abolish these criteria, nor to change their meaning fundamen-
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tally, or to add to them. The ma in use envisaged as to the amount of this power is to make regulations to define what is meant by cost.
Subsection (9) provides that where the goods in question are to be carried for hire or reward the rates quoted for their carriage are to be regarded as the cost of carriage. In this case the interpretation of the word "cost" will present no difficulty. But in the case of owner-carried operations, which was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Somers, the cost is to be taken, under subsection (9), as meaning the cost of carrying the goods. It will be necessary to define with some precision what are the costs to he taken into account in such a case.
There is also the question of other costs, apart from the costs of carriage, in a public haulage case. The intention will be to ensure that all those relative costs, both direct and indirect, are considered by the licensing authority. For example, regulations might provide that not only the cost of the vehicle operation and driver's wages are considered, but also factoring costs, costs of loading and unloading, and the cost which would arise if the use of rail rather than road resulted in different stock levels, storage, travelling arrangements—
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: If the noble Lord will allow me to interrupt him, may I say that I think, due to an inadvertent suggestion from my noble friend, the noble Lord has been put on to the wrong Clause, Clause 74. Actually we are considering the question, Whether Clause 73 shall stand part.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg your Lordships' pardon. I thought that the noble Lord opposite was talking about Clause 74(6).
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: It seems perfectly clear that the noble Lord in charge of this Bill does not understand anything about it. Perhaps he will produce something sensible on Report stage.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord really does understand about it, but he was led down the garden path by the noble Lord opposite.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I apologise to your Lordships. The reason was that I

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was misled, in turn—it was my fault—by the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has two identical Amendments to Clauses 73 and 74.
Clause 73, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 74 [Decision on applications for special authorisations]:
4.15 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 207:
Page 107, line 26, leave out subsections (5) and (6) and insert—
("() The factors relevant for making the comparison mentioned in subsections (3) and (4)(a) of this section shall be all factors relevant to a true assessment of the total effect upon the person for whom the goods are to be carried, but particularly speed, reliability, flexibility and cost, and cost for this purpose shall be interpreted in the broadest sense.")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 207, and perhaps it would be convenient if I took with it Amendment No. 207A, as the arguments are basically the same. When your Lordships accepted my Amendment to Clause 1, which ensured that when the N.F.C. consulted, in conjunction with the Railways Board, to secure that goods are carried by rail it would also be by reference to the needs of the person for whom the goods in question were to be carried, and to the nature of the goods, this clearly established the scene to assist the licensing authority in making its decision. It has to decide the criteria on which a judgment is to be made.
As the clause stands, the criteria are purely speed, reliability and cost. The object of my Amendment is to expand these so as to include flexibility and cost interpreted in the broadest sense. The all-important question is, I feel, that when the licensing authority weighs up the elements in the criteria particularly relating to cost, the overall effect on the cost of the user must be taken into account and not merely the cost of transport itself; in other words, the extra backing or insurance which may be necessary for rail transit, and also the effect on the cost of carrying other road-borne traffic if one profitable slice of traffic is creamed off for the freightliner.
On the other hand, there are reasons appertaining to rail strikes and customer
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service provided by the driver of the vehicle. I mention these examples to show that some factors are capable of quantitative assessment and some are not. It is then up to the licensing authority to reject the irrelevant material; and even if it were legally possible to consider under the heading of speed, reliability and cost, some of the points I have mentioned—which is doubtful—it would still depend in practice on how the Minister drafted his regulations under subsection (6). The noble Lord may say that it is not the intention of the Government to exclude any relevant factors, but how can they be defined in the Bill or in the regulations if, as I have tried to show, they are infinitely variable? Therefore I feel that this clause should be drafted widely with complete discretion left to the licensing authority.
With regard to my request to include flexibility as a factor in the licensing authority's consideration I think one should bear in mind that distribution is dynamic and unpredictable. One cannot plan for a sudden whim of a customer; a breakdown at a factory; delays in the provision of parts and other emergencies. Catching ships or meeting delivery dates means having a flexible and immediately available transport service. Finally, I would add, on the consideration of cost, that when the licensing authority is making a comparison I think it essential that such consideration should include the overall economic effect on the operator's fleet which the granting or withholding of a licence would have. I beg to move.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: I had intended to raise a point on the Motion that clause stand part, but I think I am entitled to raise it on this Amendment because my noble friend used the words about which I wish some clarification. Those words—"for whom the goods are to be carried"—appear in subsection (3) and subsection (5). I am not clear who the person would be for whom the goods are to be carried. It is a matter of importance, in that the special authorisation depends to some extent upon the advantages and importance to the person for whom the goods are to be carried.
If I sell some goods to the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, and consign them

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to him, is it to his advantage or to my advantage? If I am the salesman, undoubtedly it is to my advantage and I may have to pay the carriage, as I am the consignor. On the other hand, the noble Lord may be the consignee and may be paying the carriage, and it may be to his advantage, though it may be somewhat contrary to my advantage as consignor. Are these words a variant, depending upon the particular circumstances of each transaction and therefore a matter to be judged by the body giving the special authorisation, or are they something constant? If they are, is it to the advantage of the consignor or consignee?—because the Bill as at present drafted is ambiguous and capable of different meanings and much misunderstanding.
4.22 p.m.
LORD SINCLAIR OF CLEEVE: May I support the Amendment of my noble friend from the point of view of the user, large or small. I have listened to most of what has been said in the course of the Committee stage of this Bill, and apart from the debate on Clause 1 and the debate this afternoon, I think it would be true to say that in general there has been too little emphasis on the needs of the user. It is natural for us, perhaps, to think of transport as an entity in itself, whereas of course it is an essential factor in the whole chain of manufacturing, distribution and sale.
From what I may term the preliminary observations of the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, a few moments ago, it might be that the Government's answer to this Amendment is that it is not really necessary. It is true that the criteria of speed, reliability and cost might be perfectly adequate, if applied to a single movement, but when it comes to frequent movements, whether of raw materials or manufactured goods, it is very important to a firm which has frequent deliveries to be able to use what in their judgment is the speediest, most economic and most convenient method at any particular time. Therefore, I believe that it is important to introduce, as my noble friend Lord Merrivale suggests, this element of flexibility.
Perhaps to those not engaged in business this seems to impose considerable problems for the provider of transport
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but, after all, transport should be the servant of industry and not its master. Traders know from experience the best method under normal conditions for the transport of their own goods and that is the method they want to use; but they must have freedom on occasion to change the method if necessary to meet some special delivery requirement or for some other reason. After all, customers' requirements are not constant. Industry should not be in the position of having to say to a customer, "You cannot have these goods on the day you need them because we can only deliver by such-and-such a method", when in fact on that day there is an alternative method available.
Moreover, there are particular trades which require special vehicles. Naturally, there come to mind tankers with special linings, or vehicles specially adapted like those for the glass trade for the protection in transit of their products. I understand, for example, that the British Paper and Board Maker's Association have found that, excellent as the freightliners are and good as may be the hydraulic suspension and improved braking, paper sent by that means still occasionally arrives damaged and damp, so that in many cases they prefer not to use the freightliners. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am wholly in favour of the freightliner service. But it is not possible to generalise and insist on a particular method of transport, regardless of the needs of the consignor.
I believe that mechanical handling techniques and specially designed loading and offloading bays which firms with their own transport are in many cases accustomed to use are extremely valuable, and drivers themselves often have considerable and valuable customer relations and know what is required for the handling of the goods they are normally carrying. These are factors which any tribunal, if it is considering, not a single isolated move but a series of movements for a particular firm, ought to take into consideration. Therefore, I would strongly support the introduction of the word "flexibility". I would like to suggest "convenience" as well, but I do not want to complicate this. I hope I have made my point. As regards costs, I believe that the Minister is receptive to the idea that cost should be cost in its

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broadest interpretation. I support the Amendment.
THE MARQUESS OF EXETER: May I intervene for one moment to give a practical example of what my noble friends wish to secure in making this clause somewhat more flexible? At the present moment, whoever is giving authorisation is told to take account of speed, reliability and cost. I take it that reliability means essentially that goods arrive at the right time. But there are specialist industries where other factors must be taken into account.
To give an example, I am the chairman of the largest group of independent foundries in this country and many of our foundries are engaged in making iron castings for the motor trade. We use an enormous amount of cupular coke, which we usually trans-ship from South Wales. Immediately after the war we used rail. We gave it up for two reasons. The first was that when there was a cold spell the coke did not arrive in time, but the more important reason was that as a result of the extra handling and bumping it received on the journey, we had up to 18 inches of cupular dust at the bottom of the trucks instead of good coke which we could use. Although the price for shipment was competitive, if we took it from where it started, by the time it reached the foundries to be used, we had to spread that cost over the much less quantity of coke that was left. In these days we must be sure that goods are going to arrive when we want them, because we cannot carry unnecessarily large stocks without adding a great deal to costs, which, of course, eventually is reflected in the cost of the end-product, frequently in the export trade. The other thing is that we now use 20-ton lorries, which, although it means a driver for every 20-tons, we find is much cheaper in the long run than it would be taking it by rail. So I hope that whatever is agreed to be put in this clause will enable the man who gives the authorisation to look at other factors as well as the three included in the clause.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I think the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, is really probing the same point as the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn was probing on the question, That the
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clause stand part. Perhaps I could answer one or two points raised by other noble Lords at this stage before I come to the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, envisaged a hypothetical situation in which he was shipping goods to me. The position is quite clear, so far as the intention of the Bill is concerned. The words, "for whom the goods are to be carried", mean the consignor, Lord Balfour of Inchrye. My interests, the consignee's interests, are bound to be important to the consignor, because I know that over many years we are going to do a profitable business together. But it will be the consignor's interest to argue the case with the licensing authority for sending the goods to me. So the words "for whom the goods are to be carried", refer to the consignor.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: Would it not be better to put it clearly in the Bill? It would mean only a small Amendment.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I will undertake to see what can be done on Report stage. This is the point of the argument. The noble Lord, Lord Sinclair, said that I would argue that the Amendment was not really necessary. In point of fact I am about to move Amendment No. 207Z because discussions in another place indicated that a further clarification of these points is necessary. The noble Marquess, Lord Exeter, also spoke, and when I answer Lord Merrivale's Amendment I hope to satisfy the noble Marquess, too.
The Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, plus subsection (6) of Clause 74, which was probed by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, cover the same area. The Amendment, as I understand it, seeks to replace the criteria in Clause 74(5) to be used by the licensing authority for comparing road and rail services in quantity licensing cases and the Minister's power in Clause 74(6) to direct licensing authorities by regulations in the interpretation of those criteria, by a much more broadly-expressed criterion of
"all factors relevant … particularly speed, reliability, flexibility and cost",
cost being interpreted
"in the broadest sense".
I tried to say that to the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. Cost is not just the

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simple cost of shipping coke from A to B; it is shipping coke from A to B, less the cost of wastage en route. That is obviously cost. I think it is true that there is no dispute there. The Government accept the proposition that a consignor should not suffer loss by having to send goods by rail rather than road. Clause 74(5) is intended to give proper expression to the Minister's declared policy that the three criteria are met in a way relevant to the interests of the consignor.
There have been exhaustive discussions with interested organisations about the intention for quantity licensing. The Government have made plain their intention that the expression, "speed, reliability and cost" shall be interpreted very broadly and so as to include not only such specific matters as packaging and insurance costs, risk of damage to goods, or the need for larger inventories, but also factors such as flexibility and convenience. To give effect to this intention the Bill contains a power for the Minister by legislation to direct the licensing authorities as to how the factors should be interpreted. That is Clause 74(6), the Minister's power to interpret these three criteria.
We hope that the Government's intentions, which will be expressed in Amendment No. 207Z. which I hope to move soon, will help noble Lords to understand the Government's intentions clearly. We believe that this solution is preferable to the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, which we feel, since he has not had the advantage of Parliamentary draftsmen (that is denied to noble Lords) is loosely expressed, and would undoubtedly prove difficult to interpret. We resist his Amendment only for this reason.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: Would the noble Lord consider inserting in the Bill on the Report stage that the licensing authority is instructed by Parliament to interpret these regulations, to quote his words, very broadly? Will that be any help to anybody?
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, one question. He said during the course of his last speech that the Government's intention is that the consignee—and, presumably, by implication, the consignor—ought not to suffer loss
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by sending goods by rail rather than by road. If this is the case, what is the point of having the whole of this Part of the Bill? It is disliked by almost everybody except the Government. It seems to me that by saying this the Government have cut the earth away beneath their own argument, which is that they want to encourage goods to be transferred from road to rail. People who send goods by road have some good reason for doing so. They do not just send them by road because they want to "down" British Railways. It is because it is cheaper, more reliable, there is less damage, or for some other good reason that they send the goods by road. Surely the Government are being totally inconsistent. If they seriously believe that the consignor and the consignee ought not to suffer because of sending goods by rail rather than by road then they ought to withdraw this Part of this Bill and admit that the whole thing was an error from the word "Go".
LORD SOMERS: What my noble friend has just said confirms what I have been feeling right through this Part of the Bill; namely, that the intention to transfer part of the goods traffic from road to rail, while it is a good thing in itself, is being done in entirely the wrong way. The only way in which goods should be transferred from road to rail is by making the railway goods service more efficient, quicker and cheaper than the road service.
LORD MERRIVALE: I should like to thank all noble Lords behind me who have supported this Amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for what he has said. I want to refer to his Amendment (if it is in order), because Amendment No. 207Z refers to cost, and not to convenience or flexibility. During the course of his remarks he referred to flexibility, which is highly desirable; and, as the noble Lord knows—it was expressed by my noble friend Lord Sinclair of Cleeves—the Confederation of British Industry are extremely keen that there should be this element of flexibility and convenience. The noble Lord mentioned that flexibility would come into the considerations of the licensing authority. He says that he prefers his Amendment to mine, but my Amendment includes "flexibility". Why then is it that "flexibility" is not included in the

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noble Lord's Amendment? Would he consider including "flexibility"? I agree with what the noble Lord said about Parliamentary draftsmen, and from the technical point of view it may be that my Amendment is defective. Would the noble Lord answer the question as to whether he would be willing to consider inserting "flexibility" into his Amendment at a later stage?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: We are not really at odds on this. Convenience and flexibility, surely, are included in the criteria as interpreted widely in the Amendment I am about to move. Flexibility, surely, is linked with speed; so is convenience; so is reliability. Reliability is linked with convenience and flexibility. These two words, I think, can be fitted into the three criteria laid down in subsection (5) and, as I hope, widened by subsection (6) and the Amendment I am about to move. I think that the noble Lord and I are at one. It is merely a question of how to put it into the Bill, and we believe that our Amendment, because of the unfair advantages we have, is a slightly better one.
LORD MERRIVALE: On the noble Lord's assurance that in effect flexibility will be considered, I think I can leave it at that. And on the quesion of cost, I agree that the point seems to be covered; that it will be very widely based and consideration will be given to cost. With the final assurance of the noble Lord, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.42 p.m.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM LORD WINTERBOTTOM moved Amendment No. 207Z:
Page 107, line 28, leave out from ("reliability") to ("by") in line 29 and insert (", cost and such other matters relevant to the needs of the person for whom the goods in question are to be carried as may be prescribed; and the licensing authority shall assess the relative importance of those factors").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 207Z standing in the name of my noble friend on the Order Paper. This Amendment gives the Minister power by regulation to add to the factors of speed, reliability and cost, by reference to which the comparison between road and rail services is to be made in quantity licensing cases, other matters relevant to the consignor—con-
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venience and flexibility, for instance. It is important that there should be no misunderstanding about the purpose of the Amendment. It is not some last-minute attempt to alter the policy on quantity licensing; in fact, it is quite the opposite. The Government have made plain their intention that the expression "speed, reliability and cost" shall be interpreted very broadly and so as to include not only such specific matters as packaging and insurance costs, risk of damage to goods or the need for larger inventories, but also factors such as flexibility and convenience.
To give effect to this intention, the Bill contains a power for the Minister, by regulation, to direct the licensing authorities how the factors should be interpreted. This Amendment provides an additional safeguard for the consignor's interests by providing a reserve power to ensure that the intention to interpret the factors widely should not be frustrated by any limitation interest in the natural meaning of the words "speed, reliability and cost". The Amendment thus seeks to achieve the same objective as that of the noble Lord, Amendment No. 207, but it is preferred, for the reasons I have given. I beg to move.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for explaining to us the purpose of this Amendment. He need not disclaim the good intention; this is to his credit. The more he can change the basis of quantity licensing, the better it will be. If only he would change it altogether, that would be best of all. He has to some extent recanted on the original tightness of the criteria, and to that extent has improved the Bill. But, of course, the major objection still remains: that every firm will be at risk. No firm will know until it has made its application whether or no it will get a 'special authorisation; and this is of course a disastrous upset to the whole transport system. But, so far as it goes, this Amendment is an improvement to something which cannot in any event be made to work.
LORD MERRIVALE: I should like to add a few words to thank the noble Lord for introducing this Amendment. It would appear to meet the points I

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had in mind when moving my Amendment. Accordingly, I am grateful to him for moving this Amendment.
EARL BATHURST: Can the noble Lord give us an assurance regarding what he said to my noble friend Lord Balfour, who is not in his place at the moment? I understood him to say that it is a consignor who will be receiving the benefit. Many small traders have to deal with large firms. Is the noble Lord, the Minister, quite certain that under his wording, with the advantage of the Parliamentary draftsmen, he is not in effect giving a great deal of advantage to the large producer at the expense of the small man who is at the buying end? Does he not think that the consignee also should have some benefit?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: In answering the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, I tried to make the point that the consignor was responsible but that he was in fact also safeguarding the consignee's interest, and unless the consignor did safeguard the consignee's interest he would not be asked by the consignee to transport his goods for him. I think that no special favour will be granted to the large firm or the small one. The licensing authorities will act in a judicial capacity, and equal justice will be meted out to the large haulier and the small. I have no worry on this particular point.
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I ask one question, which may be so obvious that it will get an immediate response? The question is simply this. Does "person", in the singular, include the plural? This is very important because, of course, many carriers are carrying for many more consignors than one, and they may even be carrying in the same consignment different goods to which different considerations apply. I think that this is a very important consideration. That is my first question. The second is this. I revert to our previous discussion; it might be worth while referring to it again—one was, unhappily, interrupted. By his present Amendment the noble Lord is widening very considerably what subsection (6) will apply to. Subsection (6) refers to interpretation by any directions contained in regulations made by the Minister. But he now has to relate that not only to cost, reliability and speed, but also to other matters "relevant to the
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needs of the person". Directions in regard to that very wide field seem to become rather a different matter. Has the noble Lord thought of that?
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: I am so glad that the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, has again raised the point which he raised once before, that there was a little confusion as to exactly which clause we were discussing. I think he has raised a very important point in objecting to the directions contained in the regulations by the Minister. This sort of thought permeates this whole Bill. The authority of the Minister is being stressed in one place after another. In this particular case I think it is very ill-advised, and the Government should have a look at it again.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: May I support the point made by my noble friend Lord Bathurst? There are many cases where firms have an almost monopolistic position in this country. I think I am right in saying that industrial salt is one of them. It may be for the consignor's convenience that such goods should be dispatched by rail to all concerned, but in very many cases this would not suit the consignee. The consignee will have no "come-back" under this Bill, because it is for the consignor to apply for the special authorisation, and the consignee will have no other firm to whom he may go and from whom he might get a rather better service, because there is not one. Surely in this case there is a very real danger that the consignor will use his monopolistic position to make sure that it suits his convenience but not that of the consignee.
I feel that if we are going to have what I can only describe as a ridiculous system of transport envisaged under this Bill, consideration should be given to the consignee as well as to the consignor; and that something should be put somewhere in the Bill enabling the consignee, as well as the consignor, to get a special authorisation, if he so wishes and if lie has reasons for doing so. I am rather worried about this point, and about what the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, has said both to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour, and to the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst.
LORD SOMERS: I am sorry to delay the noble Lord's reply, but could he make quite clear what is the position as

835
regards damage to goods in transit? Is the responsibility that of the consignor or of British Transport?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I think that in this particular discussion we are moving into a field for lawyers. I can answer the first point made by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. A "person" is a judicial person, and therefore can mean persons as well. I have not clearly understood the dilemma facing the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. I want to understand and help the noble Lord if I can. Am I right in thinking that what is concerning him is the mixed load from one consignor sent to a number of consignees?
LORD DRUMALBYN: I was concerned primarily to make quite certain that as the Bill is drafted it would be possible for a person to make application for a special authorisation to carry goods for several persons and not just for one.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: In reason I would have said this must be so. One cannot conceive of a consignor running, shall we say, a common carrier's business, being forced to run half empty if he can get a licence for half the load and not the other half. If I may answer the point at the Report stage, I will do so. There are many points needing clarification, and I would sooner do it, after consultation, at the next stage.
EARL BATHURST: I am very unhappy about what the noble Lord said with regard to the interests of the consignee. A little while ago he gave some hope that he would consider those interests, and particularly those of the small man, with whom the noble Duke and I are concerned. He has already said that the consignor is looked after by these words in his Amendment. Would he also consider ensuring at a later stage that the consignee is looked after in a similar way? It would take very little trouble I think, if the intention is as he has said.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I thought the noble Lord was talking about the small consignor, but he is in fact talking about the small consignee.
EARL BATHURST: I was always talking about the small consignee, and so was the noble Lord, Lord Balfour.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I think the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn was defining who had problems in obtaining special authorisations. However, I will try to satisfy the noble Lord at a later date.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
4.54 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 207B:
Page 108, line 18, at end insert—
(" () In the event of the licensing authority refusing an applicant the renewal of a licence already held by him, then the applicant shall be empowered to claim compensation for financial loss arising from the said refusal.")
The noble Lord said: The purpose of this Amendment is to ensure that the compensation provisions contained in this Bill are fair. They provide for an existing bus operator under Clause 19 and Schedule 6 to receive compensation if the Passenger Transport Executive refuses an application for the continuance of an existing service and therefore this entails revocation of a consent. Paragraph 10(2) of the Schedule states:
"Where a notice",
that is a revocation notice—
"under sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph is served on any operator, the operator may at any time not later than the date specified for the purpose in the Executive's notice serve on the Executive a notice in writing …

(a) requiring the Executive to pay to the operator compensation computed in accordance with paragraph 11 of this Schedule …"

It would seem to me to be reasonable that compensation should be paid to a haulier or an own-account operator if the licensing authority refused the renewal of a licence already held by either operator. I think that such a refusal could be particularly serious in the case of the haulier, and especially a small haulier. He might have bought vehicles with an expected ten-year life and then find that the licence renewal was refused after five years. So I think there could definitely be a case of hardship here. If compensation is provided for a bus operator, I cannot see why compensation should not be provided also for a haulier or an own-account operator, though I agree that the case for the haulier would be perhaps stronger than for the owner of his own vehicles. I beg to move.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, is working in harness with the Liberal Party, I understand,

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because they apparently moved a similar Amendment in another place. We believe that this Amendment is imprecise in that it mentions only a licensing authority refusing an applicant a renewal of a licence already held by him. Since "A", "B" and "C" licences will not be renewed when quantity licensing comes in, and since special authorisations are not licences as such, the effect of the Amendment is to cover the renewal of operators' licences only. It is probably intended, nevertheless, to refer to the refusal to grant a special authorisation in succession to a carrier's licence. Am I right?
LORD MERRIVALE: Yes.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: We resist this Amendment because it attempts to establish new principles of continuity and compensation which have not been found necessary under the present carriers' licensing system and which we believe are undesirable and unnecessary under the system. The Amendment runs counter to the proposals and the intentions of the Bill as drafted.
LORD MERRIVALE: I do not understand the Government's reasoning, because a haulier may lose his means of livelihood through the refusal of renewal of licence, in the same way as a bus operator may lose his means of livelihood. I cannot see why, if it is fair, as it is, that the bus operator should be compensated because he is losing his means of livelihood, it is not fair that a haulier, who equally loses his means of earning his living, should also he compensated. I would have thought it should work both ways. The noble Lord says that this Amendment is imprecise. He said earlier that I had not the advantage of Parliamentary draftsmen, and I heartily agree. What I should like the noble Lord to consider is whether there is not a case for granting compensation to a haulier who has been deprived of his means of living.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord has in fact clarified his Amendment by saying he is not really referring to licensing but to the termination of special authorisations. There are strong arguments in equity for compensation, whatever the legal precedent may be, if quantity licensing is expected to put firms out of business. Of course it would be nonsensical to guarantee that no one will lose business in a situation where the aim
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is to switch some traffic from road to rail. The compensatory factor is that road transport is growing so fast that the 10 per cent. loss to the railway may well be compensated for by new business. But the effect of this on a growing road transport industry will be small, and as I said, soon overtaken by a general increase in traffic.
Nevertheless it is reasonable for special arrangements to be made for any operator whose carrier's licence is terminated in order to bring quantity licensing more rapidly and widely into force than would otherwise be possible. For this reason Clause 93(6) allows a licensing authority to add "hardship" to the normal criteria of "speed, reliability and cost" when deciding whether to grant a special authorisation in place of a "called-in" carrier's licence. In this case the hardship grounds would be applicable only to the period represented by unexpired parts of the called-in licence, but they would help ensure that no one would suddenly and unexpectedly have to seek new customers because the extent of his licence had been curtailed.
I should like to make two further points to the noble Lord. First, where a special authorisation is refused it means that the rail service is equally as good. Therefore, the haulier is likely to be under severe competition on that route. The special authorisation is really intended to do no more than accelerate market forces for which compensation would not be payable. Secondly, where a person is refused an operator's licence, a "quality" licence, it will be his own fault, because it will mean that he has not maintained proper standards of vehicle maintenance, and we believe that it lies within the operator's capability to raise his standards and secure such a licence. In this particular case we do not believe there should be compensation.
LORD MERRIVALE: I thank the noble Lord for those extra remarks, and particularly those about special arrangements. If I understood him aright, with regard to quantity licences there would be a case for compensation if they are called in. The point I want to make is that if they are not called in but are not renewed after the period of five years and there is hardship, would it then he a case for compensation?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: In equity, if the grounds were the same, I should have thought there were grounds for compensation.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Does the noble Lord mean that there will be compensation, or that there are theoretical grounds for compensation? If he means that there will be compensation, where is it stated in the Bill?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I have said "theoretical grounds" for compensation, in so far as Clause 93(6) says that a licensing authority can add hardship to the normal criteria mentioned when deciding whether to grant a special authorisation in place of a called-in carrier's licence. That is to say if the cancellation of a carrier's licence would involve hardship in those circumstances, the licensing authorities can take it into account.
LORD DRUMALBYN: That is not compensation in the ordinary sense, but merely a continuation of the licence until the period when it would normally have expired. Is that right?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: This, again, is a point of law. I should like to answer the noble Lord at a later stage of the Bill on this specific point.
LORD MERRIVALE: In view of that final assurance, which I imagine is reasonably satisfactory, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 74, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
5.5 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I once again apologise for having to some extent raised the matter that we have been discussing on Clause 73 instead of on Clause 74? I am sorry to have launched the noble Lord on a spate of oratory which was suddenly cut short. I hope that he will not feel that he should not resume it, because he was at a most interesting stage of what he had to say. He was dealing with the directions that may be contained in regulations by the Minister, and as I understood him he was saying that these were entirely advantageous because they were going to interpret in the widest possible sense what the
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word "cost" meant and were going to be virtually limited to that. I wonder whether he could go on from that point?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Like the noble Lord, I was sorry to stop. I thought I was in full flood, and I am sorry that I was not able to continue to the last drop. But may I repeat what I was saying? I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I re-read this section of my brief, which is precisely worded in order to clarify the situation. The power to make regulations is designed to allow the Minister to spell out more clearly and in more detail than is possible in the Bill precisely what is meant by "speed, reliability and cost" and "detriment". It will not allow him to abolish these criteria, nor to change their meaning fundamentally, nor to add to them.
The main use envisaged for this power is the making of regulations to define what is meant by "cost". Subsection (9) provides that where the goods in question are to be carried for hire or reward the rates quoted for that carriage are to be regard as the cost of carriage. In this case the interpretation of the word "cost" will, I hope, present no difficulties. But in the case of "own account" operation, cost is to be taken, under subsection (9) as meaning the cost of carrying the goods, and it will be necessary to define with some precision precisely what costs are to be taken into account in such a case.
There is also the question of other costs apart from costs of carriage in a public haulage case. The intention will be to ensure that all relevant costs, both direct and indirect, are considered by the licensing authority. For example, regulations might provide that not only the costs of vehicle operation and drivers' wages are to be considered but also packaging costs, costs of loading and unloading, and the costs that would arise if the use of rail rather than road resulted in different stock levels, storage and handling arrangements for the goods concerned—
LORD DRUMALBYN: Could I just get this right. Is the noble Lord still talking only about costs of people operating their own transport, or does this apply in general—for example, where the consignor employs a carrier, or wishes to employ a carrier, to carry the

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goods and this is opposed by the railways and the National Freight Corporation?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: As I try to envisage the situation, if a consignor arranges for a carrier to carry the goods of a consignee he will obtain a quoted price which will be charged to the consignee. This is a clear cut figure about which there is no argument. But if you get to the case when an independent—
LORD DRUMALBYN: Including insurance, and alt the other things?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: That, surely, would be included in the price of the consignment, or could be if it was so wished. But when you get to the "own account" operation, to use the words here, then of course the "cost" must mean the cost to the business as it now operates. That is why we have tried to give power to the Minister, after consultation presumably, when an individual firm is arguing its case with the licensing authorities, to take this wide spectrum of factors into account when calculating cost. I hardly feel that it could be drawn more widely.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: On a completely different point on the Question, That the clause stand part, I am still not happy about the consignee, because although the noble Lord has said that he will look into this matter, it is of great importance to a mass of small firms in this country who have to buy from large consignors and who have little chance of changing their consignor. If the noble Lord looks into it and produces something which is not satisfactory to this mass of small firms, there is little we can do about it because, as is frequently said, we do not have the advantage of Parliamentary draftsmen. This is the sort of thing on which it is going to be almost impossible for the normal person on this side of the Committee to draft a suitable Amendment before the Report stage of the Bill. I should therefore like the noble Lord to go a little further and say that he will look at this point sympathetically, because it is extremely important, and I can see that in some cases some consignors will not please their consignees if they have entire control over who applies for the special authorisation.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Noble Lords have made this point clearly. I have understood it, and I undertake to try to give a sympathetic, certainly, and satisfactory, I hope, answer at a later stage of the Bill.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: I hesitate to trespass further on the time of the Committee, but I should like to go back to the point which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. I personally find the wording in subsection (6) very wrong in a Bill that is to become an Act of Parliament. The clause says,
"In assessing the factors … the licensing authority shall act in accordance with any directions contained in regulations made by the Minister".
The Minister tells us that his right honourable friend's intentions are entirely good, and I do not doubt it. But this Bill, if it becomes an Act, will last a good many years and will be interpreted by lawyers as it is written; and these words, to my simple mind, give the Minister authority to vary the clauses, to vary the conditions in any way that seems to him fit.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Before the Minister replies, may I revert to another point which I made earlier, and which he did not answer at that time? I cannot help thinking that his brief was drafted before the last Amendment he moved was tabled. The reason is that when he was replying on the Question, That the clause stand part, he said, as I understood him, that the matters on which directions would be given would he confined to the three criteria. I think I noted this correctly. The difficulty (and I ask him to look at this again) is that this Amendment goes outside that, because the factors now are speed, reliability, and cost and "such other matters as are relevant to the needs of the person". This is what the Amendment says. The other matters relevant to the needs of the person then become factors, and this enormously widens the area on which the Minister may be able to give directions in regulations; so I really think that this clause needs to be looked at again.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The noble Lord is correct in thinking that my brief was drafted before my Amendment; but the Amendment represents the later stage of the argument. This is what I

843
hope will appear in the draft Bill as it leaves this House, and in fact this has widened the points, the criteria, made in my second attempt to explain Clause 74(2) to the noble Lord.
May I turn to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, which, because of the noble Lord's experience, must be taken very seriously, not only by this House but by my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport? The noble Lord is concerned that this particular subsection gives the Minister too much power. I have tried to spell it out earlier. The power to make regulations is designed to allow the Minister to spell out more clearly and in more detail than is possible in the Bill precisely what is meant by "speed, reliability and cost" and "detriment", but it will not allow him to abolish these criteria, nor to change their meaning fundamentally, nor to add to them. I think that this statement I have made to the House is designed to indicate that the powers in subsection (6) are limited. However the point is obviously of substance, and I will try to clarify the whole position at Report stage.
Clause 74, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 75 agreed to.
Clause 76 [Terms and conditions of special authorizations]:
5.16 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 207C:
Page 108, line 43, leave out paragraph (a).
The noble Lord said: I beg leave to move Amendment No. 207C. Clause 76(1) states that in granting a special authorisation the licensing authority shall
"attach thereto such other conditions as he thinks fit, including in particular conditions

(a) as to the vehicles which may be used under the special authorisation;"

and so on. In the past, users have understood that it was not envisaged that special authorisation would involve vehicles to be specified by registration number. That would, it seems to me, be quite unnecessary and quite undesirable. I cannot see the point at all of referring to vehicles by their registration numbers. The vehicles should be changeable, I should have thought. Therefore, I beg to move
844
that paragraph (a) of Clause 76(1) be deleted, as such deletion would cut down an item of bureaucracy which, in my humble opinion, serves absolutely no purpose.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The purpose of the Amendment may be to provide that when an applicant for a special authorisation has been granted a licence to carry certain goods there should be no limit on the amount of goods which could be carried. Paragraph (a) as it stands would enable the licensing authority to limit the volume of traffic by specifying the number and size of vehicles. There are two reasons why it is necessary to retain the licensing authorities' discretion to add a condition of this kind. In the first place it may be that an objection to a special authorisation by the railways arose because of the volume of traffic involved rather than because of its nature. In such circumstances it might be necessary to define the special authorisation in terms of vehicles in order to limit the volume of the traffic to be carried by the applicant.
In the second place, and of more general application, is the point that licensing authorities need to know which vehicles have special authorisations in order to enforce the quantity licensing system. It will not, however, be necessary in all cases to specify the actual vehicles which may be used (that is, by registration mark); in many cases it will be sufficient to use a more general specification (for example, "6, 20-ton vehicles"). This will be a valuable aid to flexibility in the industry, since it will mean that an operator with a large fleet will be able to use any of his vehicles (up to the specified maximum number) to perform an authorised service. Control will still be achievable by the issue of identity discs (see Clause 90) up to the maximum number authorised by the authorisation, which are transferable between vehicles in the operator's fleet. Licensing authorities already have discretionary powers of this kind and they are not used in order to prevent consignors from employing vehicles which are the most suitable for the traffic in question. If a licensing authority imposed a condition which the applicant thought was unreasonable he would have the right of appeal to the Transport Tribunal. I hope this meets the noble Lord's point.
LORD MERRIVALE: What I was mainly concerned with is that in effect it will not be necessary for the haulier to have to specify the registration number, and, if I understand the noble Lord aright, in effect he does not have to specify the registration number. With that, I am perfectly content, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 76 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD BURTON: May I ask for clarification on subsection (1)(c)? To take a hypothetical case of what might arise in a firm in my own area, let us imagine a driver going from Inverness to London, where he would find a return load. He would then have to telephone his firm, which would then have to go to the licensing authority in Aberdeen, 100 miles away, and he might then get his special authorisation. Would they have to wait for a copy of that authorisation to be sent all the way back to the driver in London before the driver would be allowed to leave? He has to have a copy with him, and it seems unreasonable that it should have to go through the post, perhaps taking another couple of days.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: This is a rather "fast one", but I hope that I will be able to satisfy the noble Lord. It is envisaged that holders of authorisations will usually be required to see that a copy of the conditions defining the authorised service is carried by the driver of the vehicle being used under the authorisation. The conditions written into "B" licences at the moment, which are in many ways similar to the conditions which will be written into the special authorisations under the Bill, will have to be carried on the authorised vehicle. They are normally written on the identity disc, but in future there may be cases where the conditions are too lengthy or complex to be contained on the disc and will have to be carried instead on a separate document.
The purpose of this requirement is to assist enforcement. When a vehicle is stopped at a roadside check, under Clause 82(1) an enforcement officer would be entitled to require the production of any documents carried under this subsection and to inspect and copy them as neces-
846
sary. Unless the conditions were immediately available in this way, it would be tedious to check that the lorry which had been stopped in fact was being used within the terms of the authorisation. The officer would have to note the goods which were carried and the journey on which the vehicle was engaged and then check these details later against the copy of the conditions of the authorisation held at the traffic area office. This tedious and wasteful process is avoided by requiring the conditions of the authorisation to be carried on the vehicle so that the officer can see immediately whether or not he should suspect a breach.
LORD BURTON: This is what I feared, and I believe it will cause considerable difficulty. I hope that the noble Lord will look at this point again. I feel that the situation might be eased by the licensing authority from which the load is to be taken being able to give a copy. If we are to have this iniquitous clause, I can see that it will be difficult to enforce it. I hope that this matter will be looked at again.
Clause 76 agreed to.
Clause 77 agreed to.
Clause 78 [Variation of special authorizations].
LORD WINTERBOTTOM LORD WINTERBOTTOM moved Amendment No. 208:
Page 110, line 23, leave out ("out")
The noble Lord said: I should like to take Amendment No. 208 and Amendment No. 209 together. These are drafting Amendments. The word "out" is redundant in both cases. It does not appear in similar provisions of Clause 73(1) for sending copies of applications for special authorisations to the Railways Board and the Freight Corporation. I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 209.
Amendment moved—
Page 110, line 27, leave out ("out").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
5.25 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 209A:
Page 110, line 31, at end insert—
(" () If the Licensing Authority refuses to grant a special authorisation to any applicant and the goods in respect of which the application was made are subject to any abnormal delay caused by any failure on the part of the Railway Board of any service provided by them in respect of the carriage of such goods the applicant shall have the right to claim compensation for any direct or consequential loss caused to him and such claims shall be made against the Railways Board within three months of the date of the refusal of the said application.")
The noble Lord said: Where traffic is compulsorily transferred to the National Freight Corporation or the Railways Board against the wishes of the user, and the user subsequently suffers loss thereby in terms of damage or delay, and so on, because of the failure of the N.F.C. or the railways to match promises with performance, the user has no redress. As I understand it, the only action the applicant can take is to make a further application to the licensing authority for special authorisation. Surely if the user suffers a loss through a decision taken against his wishes he should be entitled to some redress or compensation as a matter of common justice. That is the reason for this Amendment. I beg to move.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: The Amendment as drafted is unacceptable for the following reasons. Under the present licensing system the railways are able to object to the issue of an "A" or "B" licence to a public haulier on the grounds that they already have spare capacity to carry the goods. If, as a result, the consignor entrusts his goods to the railway he has no statutory right under the Road Traffic Act 1960 to compensation, should loss be caused by abnormal delay. This Bill, however, provides a real sanction against the railways' making claims for their services which they subsequently cannot carry out.
One of the criteria which a licensing authority must take into account when considering an application for special authorisation is that of reliability. The railways know well that if they object to an application for a special authorisation and are unable to supply a satisfactory alternative service, their failure will be quoted in licensing authority courts all
848
over the country. A precedent will have been created, and will be quoted. They are therefore likely to be most cautious in making objections. In the event of persistent failure by the railways to honour their undertakings, a consignor would be able to apply at any time for a special authorisation with enhanced chances of having it granted. Bearing in mind these considerable safeguards in the Bill, and the fact that delays are not the sole preserve of the railways, we believe that this Amendment should be resisted.
An important point is that it will be open to the applicant to contend that reasonable insurance costs arising from carriage of goods by rail should be taken into account in comparing road and rail alternatives. This point was put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn. I give an assurance that in making regulations under Clause 74(6), interpreting the scope of the costs which may be taken into account when comparing road and rail services, the Minister will direct licensing authorities to take proper account of the reasonable costs of any insurance necessary to compensate the consignor against possible failure by rail or road to deliver goods promptly. I hope that this will satisfy the noble Lord.
LORD MERRIVALE: The best part of the noble Lord's reply came right at the end: that there were grounds for a consignor to obtain compensation if the railways or road haulier did not meet the requirements which they had contracted to meet. Have I understood the noble Lord aright?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: It is not a question of compensation. I said that the individual firm can insure against damage arising from lack of reliability by road or rail transport. And the cost of such insurance can be taken into account when calculating the costs of carrying goods by rail instead of by road.
LORD HAWKE: Can the noble Lord confirm that this is correct? This is a new one on me. Is it possible in the market to take out a policy against the railways' failing to deliver one's goods promptly?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I believe it is possible to ensure against an unidentified flying object landing on your roof.

849
You can insure against anything. What I have said is that it will be open to the applicant to contend that reasonable insurance costs arising from carriage of goods by rail should be taken into account in comparing costs of transport by road and rail. I can assure the noble Lord that in making regulations under Clause 74(6), interpreting the scope of the costs which may be taken into account when comparing road and rail services, the Minister will direct licensing authorities to take proper account of the reasonable costs of any insurance necessary to compensate the consignor against possible failure of rail—or, if it comes to that, of road—to deliver goods promptly. One can conceive of an essential element of a complex plant having to reach that plant by a given date. Known costs would have to be met if it did not achieve the required delivery date, and a penalty clause might be involved. The cost of insuring against such a penalty clause could be included when comparing costs of transporting goods by road and rail.
LORD HAWKE: The noble Lord has made a very important point, which I do not think is well known to the general public. My noble friend's Amendment raises rather wider issues than the point he has made. I have always maintained that if British Railways are to regain the confidence of their customers—and it is the loss of that confidence that is really causing their big losses—they must try to make certain that they deliver goods promptly, or, in default, pay compensation. If it were well known to the ordinary small consignor that, if his goods did not arrive at a certain specified time, British Railways would automatically pay him £10 or whatever it was, that would go a long way to restore confidence, But what the noble Lord has said about its being possible for the commercial consignor to insure against British Railways not delivering his goods in time is most important. I was quite unaware that such a policy was available.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: Surely, if this is possible—and, of course, I accept the noble Lord's statement that it is—it would be much simpler and easier for all concerned if British Railways carried the insurance end agreed to pay compensation. My noble friend's Amendment has at least brought out the point that the noble Lord is recommending
850
firms who are forced by this Part of the Bill to use British Railways to insure against late delivery, and if British Rail are confident that they are going to supply an excellent service they obviously ought to undertake the insurance themselves. That would save a great deal of trouble, and I should have thought that the Amendment was entirely acceptable, so far as it went. But it seems entirely untrue to say that this is on a par with the present "A" and "B" licences granted to hauliers. This goes much further than those licences, and people are far more likely to find themselves frustrated by the delays of British Railways, if we ever have to live under the new system, than they do at the moment.
LORD WINTER BOTTOM: I must once again make a point which I made in the spirited debate on Amendment No. 202. It is assumed by many noble Lords opposite that everything that goes by rail goes astray and everything that goes by road is delivered promptly on the right day and at the right time. That is something which I cannot accept.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: If it is any comfort to the noble Lord, we always stipulate when we are getting goods from the South that they should go by British Rail and not by British Road Services, because we find British Rail much more reliable than British Road Services, to our part of the country. So I can assure the noble Lord that I am not speaking because I personally do not like using British Rail. On the whole, we are lucky. We live on a main line and British Rail give us a very good service. But that experience is not universal.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I am certain that British Rail will use the noble Duke's tribute as part of their advertising.
EARL BATHURST: May I join with my noble friend Lord Hawke in taking up the very important point which the noble Lord has made with regard to insurance? Could he confirm that claims for damage due to the loss of a process, or loss of orders from failure to deliver a particular machine, would also he covered in this insurance, and not just the value of the goods dispatched? There is a very great difference, and I suspect that such insurance would add very considerably to the cost of the transport.
LORD MITCHISON: I am speaking as a mere Life Peer, and we were told on the highest authority the other day, I think on television, that we spoke too much—something which I am sure will not affect any noble Lord opposite—and also that we spoke on matters of which we had no experience. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, is not a Life Peer, and therefore he is no doubt entitled to speak on things of which he has no experience. But what earthly authority has he for suggesting that it is not possible to insure against this risk? Have any of the noble Lords who have been asking about it tried? I have always understood that the only difficulty was to insure against twins, but my noble friend on my left tells me that even that is now possible. I have known some quite remarkable risks covered and I see nothing particularly remarkable in this one.
Those who put down the Amendment presumably know what it means. What I have been waiting to hear is, what is meant by the word "abnormal". Is it the same delay that is normal in Scotland, where I have always understood (I hope the noble Duke will not take this personally) that all the trains stopped at Blair Atholl, because one of his ancestors stipulated accordingly with the railways. If I am wrong, I shall withdraw at once.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I can assure the noble Lord that he is absolutely right, and I shall not take it personally, because it was well before I was born.
LORD MITCHISON: That, clearly, would not be a normal delay! I have a suspicion that the noble Lords who have put down and supported this Amendment so fervently have done so, not on any particular public ground but because, for the moment, they are committed lock, stock and barrel to supporting any demand, however preposterous, provided that the demander is a road haulier.
LORD TREFGARNE: Being unlike the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, a hereditary Peer, I naturally support this Amendment. Perhaps I may ask him whether he realises that although the insurance he mentioned may be available on the market, the question is: how much is one going to have to pay for it? Although I am not a Lloyd's underwriter, my noble
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friends who are tell me that they would not accept such a risk for any premium in the world.
LORD MITCHISON: I do not have extensive acquaintances among underwriters, although I know one or two underwriting agents. I am sorry that the noble Lord's friends are so unenterprising. But the question was whether or not it was possible to insure against this risk. There was no question about the premium for it, and that was not asked. We were told by two authorities on the last Back Bench but one opposite that you could not insure against that risk, and I took leave to wonder whether they really knew what they were talking about.
LORD HAWKE: The noble Lord is grossly misrepresenting what I and others said. What we said was that it is not generally known to the public that the risk can be insured. Also, when despatching a school trunk from the local station I have not seen a notice signed by Lloyd's that I could take out a policy to make certain that it arrived in four days. Of course, the general public do not know anything about this. A big consignor can go to an insurance company. My own insurance company does not cover that loss, but I have no doubt that Lloyd's could. But the ordinary member of the general public who despatches one parcel from the railway does not know anything about insurance.
LORD MITCHISON: I should not wish for worlds to misrepresent the noble Lord. I thought I understood what he said, but clearly I must have misrepresented him. But as to sticking up notices in railway stations, he will not find one about twins if he wants to insure against them.
LORD MERRIVALE: I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, is still in a position to insure against having twins. If I may revert to my Amendment, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, said that its drafting was faulty, but I wondered whether he would consider the principle behind it, whereby consignors should be able to put in a claim when the railways did not honour their undertaking. The only thing the noble Lord said was that it would be possible to take out an insurance policy,

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and that the cost of this insurance policy would be considered, along with other matters, by the licensing authority. But I should have thought that that would put up the cost of transporting whatever goods were being considered, and that would be regrettable.
I am grateful for the support I received from these Benches, and I am most grateful to noble Lords for bringing out certain points and stressing them after the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, mentioned the question of the insurance policy. I have a feeling that the noble Lord will not reconsider this question, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 78, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 79 [Revocation and suspension of special authorisations]:
LORD WINTERBOTTOM LORD WINTERBOTTOM moved Amendment No. 210:
Page 112, line 9, leave out ("a public") and insert ("an").
The noble Lord said: With the consent of your Lordships, I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, and 217 together. The 25 Amendments in this group, which include some moved earlier in our discussions and those I propose to move now, are closely inter-related. They are all necessary to implement the undertaking given by the Minister of State during the Commons Report stage that Amendments would be tabled in the Lords to permit of appeals connected with both quality and quantity licensing to the Transport Tribunal. This arrangement replaces that at present in the Bill under which appeals concerning operators' and transport managers' licences would be decided by the Minister along with disciplinary appeals connected with special authorisations, whilst other appeals concerning special authorisations would lie to the Transport Tribunal. Although there are arguments for the proposals at present in the Bill, my right honourable friend the Minister has decided, after careful consideration of the many representations from the interests concerned, to make the change to the Tribunal. The Council on Tribunals and the Transport Tribunal
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itself have of course been fully consulted, and have expressed agreement.
I am afraid that the somewhat forbidding nature of this list of Amendments is unavoidable. Such a change has consequences for many clauses and Schedules. Indeed, the Minister of State, in explaining why the Government could accept the principle but not the substance of the Opposition's Amendments in the Commons, said:
"I know the honourable gentleman"—
that is Mr. Gordon Campbell—
"will appreciate that many consequential Amendments, which naturally he has not been able to devise, will be required it this is accepted".
Many Amendments, however, involve no more than a substitution of "Transport Tribunal" for "Minister" in the appropriate clauses. It is for this reason that I beg to move the first of this group of Amendments.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 211.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 10, leave out ("hold such an inquiry") and insert ("do so").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 212.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 14, leave out ("Minister") and insert ("Transport Tribunal").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 213.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 18, leave out ("Minister") and insert ("Transport Tribunal").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 214.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 19, leave out ("Minister shall give his") and insert ("tribunal stall give its").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 79, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 80 [Appeals in connection with special authorizations]:
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 215.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 26, at end insert—
"() being the holder of a special authorisation in respect of which, or a person in respect of whom, a direction or order has been given or made under section 79(1), (2) or (3) of this Act, is aggrieved by that direction or order; or").—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 216.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 30, leave out from ("Tribunal") to end of line 33.—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I beg to move Amendment No. 217.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 40, leave out subsections (3) to (7).—(Lord Winterbottom.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 80, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 81 [Consignment notes]:
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 217A:
Page 113, line 32, leave out ("in the prescribed form and").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 217A. This Amendment is concerned with consignment notes, and with the provision that they should be "in the prescribed form", which would place a particularly unreasonable burden on the users of transport. Your Lordships are certainly well aware that in a large number of cases consignment notes used when transporting goods are so designed as to meet the user's internal accounting and statistical arrangements. To conform to one particular Government form would in my humble opinion upset the administrative arrangements of a large number of firms, and I am sure that that is not the Government's wish or intention. With those few words I beg to move the Amendment.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: We have a great deal of sympathy with the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord, which would prevent the Minister from prescribing the form of consignment notes which have to be carried in all goods vehicles which are the subject of special authorisations. Subsection (1) of Clause 81 permits the Minister to prescribe the form of a consignment note and the particulars which it shall contain. No objection is taken to the prescription of particulars, but the noble Lord who has proposed the Amendment may think that by giving the Minister power to prescribe the form, firms will be prevented from using their own kinds of consignment note, which are sometimes specially designed for the business in which they are engaged. Is that the noble Lord's fear?
LORD MERRIVALE: Yes.
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: I can give the noble Lord an assurance that there is no intention of laying down a standard form for all consignment notes. Indeed, the power to prescribe a form is merely something to be held in reserve in case serious difficulties arise in enforcement of quantity licensing. It would be possible for a firm, if it so wished, deliberately to use a consignment note which, while containing the prescribed particulars, presented them in a thoroughly obscure and devious fashion. This, of course, would add to the problems of enforcement. But the power that we wish to retain in this Bill is only a reserve power, and is not one for general use.
LORD MERRIVALE: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his assurance, if I understood him aright, that this will in effect be just a reserve power, and that reputable firms will in fact be allowed to use their own consignment notes. Is that correct?
LORD WINTERBOTTOM: Yes.
LORD MERRIVALE: With that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 81 agreed to.
Clause 82 [Powers of entry and inspection]:
LORD BURTON LORD BURTON moved Amendment No. 217B:
Page 115, line 27, leave out ("charged since that date with") and insert ("found guilty of").
The noble Lord said: I apologise to the noble Lord for the late hour at which this Amendment was put down. I hope that it will not cause him undue difficulties. Subsection (6) of Clause 82 appears to be put in to safeguard the haulier against inefficiency and undue delay. But it would seem that after five and a half months, possibly of anxiety, a charge could be lodged against a haulier. He might then be kept a further interminable time awaiting a trial at which he might be acquitted. Or perhaps the charge would be withdrawn. I feel that the principle of my Amendment should at least receive consideration, as it will shorten the time that anyone could be kept waiting. I beg to move.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): I appreciate the noble Lord's purpose in moving this Amendment. It is, in short, to avoid unnecessary anxiety to the person who has had documents seized and who therefore may be subject to a charge. But the purpose of Clause 82(6) is to provide a remedy for a person from whom documents have been seized under the power in the first part of the subsection but who has not, within six months of the seizure, been charged with an offence in connection with the documents. Such a person may at the end of that time apply to the magistrates for an order as to the disposal of the seized documents. The point of this provision is that after a lapse of six months no summary proceedings can be initiated. If no one has been charged within that period the seized documents may safely be disposed of, for it will be impossible to bring proceedings in connection with them. So there is no further anxiety on that score.
But the effect of the noble Lord's Amendment would he to make it possible for a person who had been charged within the six months but whose case had not yet been decided upon—although there might have been hearings —to apply for the return of the documents which would be very material to the case. Such a situation would be
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intolerable. There might be cases involving or alleging forgery or falsification of documents, and they might take much longer than six months. There might be indictable offences, heard first in a summary court and then committed to a higher court. Such cases might take longer than six months before being decided, because the preparation would take some time. If the noble Lord's Amendment were accepted it would be impossible to complete the case because the documents on which the charge rested would be destroyed. I have given two explanations: first, that after six months there is an end to the matter, and if no action is taken there cannot be further anxiety; and, secondly, if an actual case is proceeding it is quite right that the documents should not be destroyed.
LORD BURTON: It seems a very long time to have to wait before a haulier can get the return of the documents, but I have no doubt that the noble Lord has looked at this matter carefully. May I ask whether this also applies to Scotland? I think that in Scotland the period within which a case must come before the courts is longer than six months.
LORD STONHAM: As to those parts of the Bill which apply to Scotland, whatever the law in Scotland, this writ will run. I cannot enter into discussions about the whole of the law of Scotland.
LORD BURTON: I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 82 agreed to.
Clauses 83 and 84 agreed to.
5.55 p.m.
LORD WADE LORD WADE moved Amendment No. 218:
After Clause 84, insert the following new clause:
Prevention of jack-knifing
".—(1) All articulated vehicles as designated by this Act or any previous Act shall be required after the appointed day to be constructed in such a manner as to prevent such articulated vehicles from jack-knifing.
(2) All articulated vehicles as designated by this Act or any previous Act and which were constructed before the appointed day shall he required to have fitted to them within six months a device approved by the Minister to prevent such articulated vehicles from jackknifing."
The noble Lord said: This is a new clause concerned with articulated vehicles. I understand that it was selected for debate in another place but owing to the operation of the guillotine the debate did not take place. Therefore it seems all the more fitting that some consideration should be given to it by this Committee. It really falls into the category of road safety; but I am advised that this is the appropriate stage at which this new clause should be inserted. The purpose of the clause is to ensure that all articulated vehicles are fitted with a device which will prevent jackknifing. In drafting this clause it may be that there has been some oversimplification of wording and of the suggested procedure—I agree that oversimplification is not exactly a characteristic of this Bill—but it is the intention behind the moving of this clause that is important.
As noble Lords may be aware, some very tragic accidents have occurred as a result of the jack-knifing of these articulated vehicles. It is not due to negligence on the part of the driver of the car or cars that are hit as a result of an articulated lorry getting out of control. The motorist involved may be driving perfectly properly and carefully. He may be driving in the opposite direction to the lorry. It may be that the vehicles are on a dual carriageway and cars on the other carriageway are involved, suddenly, in a disastrous accident. As I say, this may be no fault of the injured party; and it is not necesarily due to negligence on the part of the driver of the articulated vehicle. The causes are much more complex than that. It can happen where the driver of the articulated lorry is a very experienced driver.
The problem is to provide the right safeguard. There are a variety of conditions which may cause jack-knifing following even normal application of the brake. I have made some study of the technicalities but I shall not attempt to describe them; I do not think it is necessary to do so for the purpose of this Amendment. It is acknowledged that since the Motor Industry Research Association Report in 1963, considerable progress has been made in braking systems; but that alone is not enough. What is required is a device which will automatically counteract the tendency to jack-
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knife which may result from braking. I am told that a device is now in use which is proving successful in preventing these serious accidents from taking place. As I understand it, the essence of the solution lies in the torsional damping at the king-pin.
I tabled a Question on May 30 of this year in answer to which the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, said that trials were in progress and that the scope of these should be extended. Reference to this is made in col. 1227 of the OFFICIAL REPORT. I should like to know what progress has been made. I gained the impression from the Answers I received from the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, that the Government were not yet ready for legislative action but that this would be merely a matter of time. This is a matter of real urgency, especially if it is true—as I believe it to be—that serious and sometimes fatal accidents occur that could have been avoided.
If there is to be legislation, what form will it take? It would appear to me appropriate that it should be incorporated somewhere in this Bill. If not, how long will it be before some action will be taken on this matter? I hope that it will not be deferred indefinitely. I feel sure that the Government will not say "Thank goodness we have got rid of the Transport Bill and we need not worry any more", because this problem is a worrying one. If it is not to be dealt with under this Bill, may I ask how it will be dealt with? Will there be amending legislation to the Road Safety Act 1967, or to this Bill? Alternatively, are there powers to deal with this matter by regulation, once it is clear that a satisfactory device is available? I do not think it necessary to elaborate on this. Other speakers from the Liberal Benches have made clear that we are concerned about road safety. I think this is a practical example of a need for greater safety which could and should be met. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 84, insert the said new clause. —(Lord Wade.)
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: I wish to support the noble Lord, Lord Wade. This matter particularly affects my country, Scotland where we have one main road from the North to the South, the A.9: and a very inferior road it is,

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too. I have seen traffic on that road held up for a matter of four or five hours in the winter because one lorry has jackknifed. Nothing could get past, and had any driver tried to do so, he would have gone over a precipice on one side or into a cliff on the other. I expect the noble Lord will know that this stretch of road is between Dunkeld and Pitlochry. This is a matter of great importance to us.
EARL HOWE: I support the Amendment on the grounds of road safety and common sense. I read in the evening paper to-night that owing to jack-knifing an articulated vehicle was involved in an accident at Hammersmith. The unfortunate driver was extricated from the vehicle with a severed leg, and I think that the traffic was held up for something like three hours. This, as has been said already, is a kind of accident which occurs frequently and is caused, obviously, by the sudden application of the brakes and a rather quick alteration of course. That can cause a vehicle of that description to jack-knife. It is possible to make a vehicle safe so that it cannot jack-knife or, if it does, that it is a very rare occurrence. I suggest, purely on the grounds of road safety, that if possible we should do something about it.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I think that noble Lords would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wade, in his desire to incorporate something in the Bill which would avoid serious accidents, but the point that occurs to me is whether anything has yet been sufficiently proved to prevent lorries from jack-knifing. I know that a good deal of research has been undertaken, but I should have thought that at present it is premature to think that there are any proved methods available which can be incorporated in respect of all vehicles of this kind. There would not be much point in putting forward an Amendment which might encourage people to fit the wrong sort of equipment on their lorries.
LORD STONHAM: I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Wade, has had the chance of raising this matter, because it is obviously one with which we are all very much concerned. I have often discussed transport matters with the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, and I have never disagreed with him. I hope that we shall
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keep that state of affairs this evening. I agree with what he said about the difficulties. It is a question not only o traffic congestion, but of the ghastly accidents which may be caused by jack-knifing. I agree that it is a most urgent and important matter. I do not agree with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that there is yet a cure, or that we could do something immediately. If he disagrees with that, I should be glad to have details.
Jack-knifing involves the tractor part of an articulated vehicle folding hack on to the semi-trailer. The alternative cause of such an accident, although we describe them all by the same name, is trailer-swinging, which involves the trailer portion of the vehicle swinging round out of line with the tractor. Generally, as I understand it, the causes are insufficient adhesion of the rear wheels of the tractor, which is jack-knifing, or insufficient adhesion of the trailer wheels, which is trailer-swing. Accidents may also he caused by rapid changes in direction when negotiating a bend, or by unwanted wheel locking when braking.
The noble Lord, Lord Wade, said, in his characteristically gentle way, that there might be some over-simplification of drafting in his Amendment. The clause, as drafted, is unrealistic because it draws no distinction between jackknifing before an accident and jackknifing after impact; it speaks me rely of jack-knifing. There is a very important difference between the two, particularly if we are thinking in terms of legislation, as we undoubtedly are. It is not possible, subject to what may be said by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to prevent jack-knifing or trailer-swing after an articulated vehicle has had an accident involving the hard striking of son e solid object. Therefore we have to confine ourselves to, and my right honourable friend the Minister is concerned to prevent, jack-knifing before an accident, if that is possible. It is a point of substance. Any legislation would have to attempt to recognise this by drawing a disinction between before and after.
The noble Lord asked how are we to deal with it. My noble friend Lord Addison suggested that it might not be something which we could incorporate in this Bill. Already the Minisier has adequate powers, under Section 64 of the Road Traffic Act 1960 and Section

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10 of the Road Traffic Act 1967, to impose by regulation requirements about how articulated vehicles should be constructed and equipped with a view to preventing jack-knifing. So far, these powers have not been used because there is no known infallible remedy to prevent jack-knifing before an accident. Assuming that there is, or may be, the clause is to that extent unrealistic. As my noble friend Lord Hilton of Upton said on May 30, a great deal of progress has been made towards solving the problem, and I am glad to say that co-operation between the Ministry of Transport, vehicle manufacturers and operators, and brake manufacturers is already ensuring that new vehicles are being so constructed as at least to minimise the likelihood of jack-knifing. But the development, proving and production of anti-jack-knifing devices suitable for the wide variety of types of articulated vehicle in use has a good way to go before there could be any question of compulsory use.
It is by no means established yet that it will be practicable to equip all these vehicles effectively. It also has to be established not only that the devices are effective in controlling jack-knifing but that they do the job without causing other difficulties or problems—for example, with steering. There are real risks of this which can be guarded against only by large-scale and prolonged trials under a wide range of operating conditions.
The Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Technology are actively promoting these trials. More particularly, arrangements have been made for fitting 77 British Road Services vehicles for trial purposes with one type of device for preventing wheel-locking, and these arrangements are well advanced. Other anti-jack-knifing devices will be subjected to trials as soon as the equipment and the vehicles are available. There is nothing between us on this matter. We are all together in wanting to solve the problem so far as possible. When we have, through trials, arrived at what is satisfactory, and when, if that stage comes, there is the possibility of having compulsion, the powers are there to impose compulsion by regulation. Let us hope that the day is not far distant.
6.10 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: May I ask the noble Lord a question or two? I thought it probable that the Minister had power to deal with the construction aspect of this question. That is what the Amendment is about. I am sure that the noble Lord will not mind my saying that it is perhaps too widely drawn, but that does not matter. What worries me is what we heard from the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie. Let us think of a lonely Scottish road, where such an accident would not only cause a traffic jam but also a great deal of danger before anybody could get there to put lights on or take proper precautions. I wonder whether my noble friend can tell me if there is power in proper cases to prevent articulated vehicles, where the risk of jack-knifing has not been minimised or where it still exists in spite of having been minimised, going along roads where they would expose everybody to inconvenience and risk if they were involved in this kind of accident. It is not the sort of question I can expect my noble friend to answer off the cuff. I should like to know the answer, and I expect from the look in the noble Earl's eye that he would rather like to hear the answer, too. If my noble friend cannot give us an answer now, perhaps he will give us one later.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for his full and interesting answer on this point, which I think worries everybody, because there are such particularly unpleasant accidents from the jack-knifing of articulated vehicles. But he gave the answer I rather expected —that is, that the Minister has the power but at present there is not the state of mechanical development which makes its use realistic. I dare say that other noble Lords besides myself have received representations from the manufacturing industry expressing alarm if this obligation were put on them. I do not think that that is any reason for the Ministry not continuing to keep up the pressure, because this is a matter of general concern. But it is an enormously difficult thing to do.
I am content to accept the assurance the noble Lord has given that the Ministry is keeping up the presssure. I was encouraged to hear that they are making

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field-scale experiments with B.R.S. vehicles to try out these devices. I am sure that that should be done. Gradually we shall get something better than we have now and perhaps we shall reduce the terrible severity of these accidents. The Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wade, seems to have served a useful purpose in giving us this opportunity of expressing the strength of our feelings about this and supporting the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in what he is doing.
LORD STONHAM: I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, for his support. If I may venture to answer my noble friend Lord Mitchison, although I thought that the road to Pitlochry was a little wider, there are two answers. My noble friend's first question was: Has the Minister power to order the construction of vehicles in such a way as to prevent jack-knifing? My noble friend said that that was the effect of the noble Lord's Amendment.
LORD MITCHISON: That was not the question I asked.
LORD STONHAM: I only want one "cuff" at a time. I want to answer the question as I understand it, and if I am wrong my noble friend can ask another question afterwards. The Minister can have no power to prevent jack-knifing occurring after an accident. But under the two Acts I mentioned the Minister has power to order vehicles to be so constructed as to minimise jack-knifing and to insist on that being done. But before he can make such orders, he has to be sure that an appropriate machine has been invented, and we have not reached that position.
LORD MITCHISON: I will avail myself of the opportunity my noble friend gave me. That was not the question I asked. The question I asked was: Is there power to prevent vehicles which are liable to this kind of accident using roads where such an accident might cause abnormal inconvenience or risk? I had in mind the narrow Highland roads, often the only means of communication for miles around, where a hold-up of traffic might cause great inconvenience. I do not want my noble friend to answer now, but I should like him to write to me afterwards, if he would be so kind.
LORD WADE: I am much obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for his courteous reply. It would seem that the distinction between jack-knifing before and after an accident is a valid point. I am not an expert, and I appreciate that this may not be clear from the Amendment which I moved. The noble Lord informed us of the study that is taking place. I should like to be assured that all modern devices have been tested. I have been given a considerable amount of literature and information about one device. I never like to use this House (or another place, when I was in it) to advertise particular projects, but I am informed that a device is in use and is safeguarding accidents. Therefore, I should like to be assured that any device in use on articulated vehicles is being carefully studied by the Ministry. I am glad to hear that power exists, and I hope that it will be used when the Ministry is satisfied. Before I withdraw my Amendment, I should like to give the noble Lord an opportunity to answer the point about the study.
LORD STONHAM: I can say that any invention will be tried on an extensive scale for prolonged periods. We are as anxious as anyone in the industry to find a solution. With regard to the question put to me by my noble friend Lord Mitchison, I am sorry that I did not understand him in the first place. The answer is: Yes, there are powers, both national and local. In regard to his detailed question, I will write to him as he suggested.
LORD WADE: I am sure this has been a useful debate, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 85 agreed to.
Clause 86 agreed to.
Clause 87 [Inquiries]:
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 220. This Amendment was discussed with No. 178, to which it is consequential.
Amendment moved—
Page 117, line 30, leave out ("a public") and insert ("an").—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 221.
Amendment moved—
Page 117, line 32, at end insert—
("() Subject to any provision made by regulations, any inquiry held by a licensing authority for the purposes of this Part of this Act or Schedule 9 thereto shall be held in public.
() Information with respect to any particular trade or business which is given at any such inquiry while admission to the inquiry is restricted in accordance with regulations shall not, so long as that trade or business continues to be carried on, be disclosed except—

(a) with the consent of the person for the time being carrying on that trade or business; or

(b) for the purpose of the discharge by any person of his functions under this Part of this Act or Schedule 9 thereto; or

(c) with a view to the institution of, or otherwise for the purposes of, any legal proceedings pursuant to or arising out of this Part of this Act or Schedule 9 thereto (including proceedings before the Transport Tribunal);

and any person who discloses any information in contravention of this subsection shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £200.").—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 87, as amended, agreed to.
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 222.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 87, insert the following new clause—
Provisions relating to Transport Tribunal
(".—(1) On an appeal to the Transport Tribunal under this Part of this Act or Schedule 9 thereto against the decision of any licensing authority, the tribunal shall have power to make such order as it thinks fit and any such order shall be binding on the licensing authority.
(2) For the purpose of exercising the jurisdiction of the Transport Tribunal under this Part of this Act and Schedule 9 thereto—

(a) the Road Haulage Appeals Division of the tribunal shall consist of the president of the tribunal and two members of the tribunal of whom one shall be a person of experience in transport business or commercial affairs and the other a person of experience in financial matters or economics; and

(b) that Division or any person or persons appointed under section 57(5) of the Act of 1962 may be assisted by an assessor drawn from a panel of persons appointed by the Lord Chancellor for that purpose after consultation with the Minister and the Secretary of State;

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and the provisions of paragraph 6(2) and (3) of Schedule 10 to the Act of 1962 shall apply to a member of that panel as they apply to a member of the special panel nominated by the Lord Chancellor, and paragraph 8(1) of that Schedule shall apply to a person giving such assistance as aforesaid as it applies to a person who is appointed from the special panel.
(3) The Transport Tribunal may remit the whole or any part of any fee in respect of an appeal to the tribunal under this Part of this Act or Schedule 9 thereto if the applicant satisfies the tribunal that by reason of his poverty it is reasonable so to do.
(4) An appeal to the Transport Tribunal from a decision of the licensing authority for an area in Scotland shall be heard in Scotland.").—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clauses 88 and 89 agreed to.
Clause 90 [Regulations and orders for purposes of Part V]:
LORD STONHAM: I beg to move Amendment No. 223.
Amendment moved—
Page 118, line 29, leave out from ("authorisations") to end of line 30.—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 90, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 91 [Interpretation of Part V]:
6.20 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD moved Amendment No. 224A:
Page 121, line 9, at end insert ("but construction centres shall not be deemed to be operating centres, unless vehicles are intended to be based or centred on such sites for 12 months or more").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 224A. Clause 90 is the definition clause, the interpretation of Part V, and the Amendment is to amend the definition of "operating centre" which now stands in the clause. It is perhaps relevant to mention that the definition of "operating centre" was altered on the Report stage in another place without the opportunity to debate the effect of the change; and the change is quite significant. The Amendment which I am now moving would, to some extent, meet the effect of the Amendment on the Report stage in another place,

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and I think makes quite plain what the intention is. The Amendment says:
"but construction centres shall not be deemed to be operating centres, unless vehicles are intended to be based or centred on such sites for 12 months or more."
This is to meet the needs of the construction industry, who are concerned about the definition as it now stands. The construction industry, of course, open up sites all over the place, often at some distance from their main headquarters, especially the bigger firms, and usually they are there for at least a year, and sometimes longer.
As the Bill is drafted, whenever a construction site is kept in operation for more than three months a separate operator's licence would be required for it; and possibly, if the traffic commissioner required it, a separate transport manager's licence would also have to be applied for. This seems to be rather an unnecessary procedure for what must be in the general course of the building industry, and the effect of this Amendment would be to relieve this situation so that the construction firm would have 12 months before these necessities arose. That, I believe, would generally assist the working of the construction industry.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has told us quite clearly the object of this Amendment, which, in his words, is to relieve construction firms of the obligation of sending their vehicles for maintenance and servicing to the centre of the firm unless they are going to be on a site for 12 months or more. The Amendment refers to "construction centres", but I am quite sure the noble Lord meant "construction sites"—not that that is anything between friends. I am afraid that the idea behind the Amendment is not acceptable. One of the essentials, and to me one of the most important essentials, of this Bill is safety. This Amendment, in our view, would relax the controls of quality licensing for construction vehicles to an inordinate degree. The basis of that system is that safety should be kept under close control by the local licensed operating centres and the appointment of licensed managers there. Concessions have already been made in the Bill to the construction industry by allowing vehicles to operate up to three
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months under an existing licence when they are transferred to the operating centre.
The amount of work needed on vehicles in the construction industry is very heavy, because they get so bashed about; they need a high degree of maintenance and inspection and supervision by skilled motor engineers. We feel it is not unreasonable when the vehicles are still stationed at a new centre after three months that a local licence should be taken out and a manager appointed to supervise the maintenance of them. This will not mean that maintenance facilities will have to be provided at every construction site. We appreciate that this would be unnecessary and, indeed, impossible. What will be needed is that someone on the site will have to undertake the responsibility of seeing that the vehicles are sent for maintenance to the regional or central maintenance depot or to a local garage. It may mean an increase in paper work over the present system, but surely that is a small price to pay for improved safety. I hope that we may have the co-operation of noble Lords in ensuring that these safety measures, when they are reasonable and necessary, shall remain in the Bill.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for his reply to this point. I think he is stretching the safety requirements a little in this respect. Of course, we are all with him in wanting to increase and improve road safety. He referred to the point of the difference between the supervision of the safety factors by the local licensing authority as opposed to the licensing authority of the head-quarters of the construction firm. He sets that against the extra paper work and extra expense that would be involved in the construction firm's applying for an operating licence, and probably a transport manager's licence, in the new area. That is not insignificant, and it is right to weigh it objectively against such safety factor as there is here.
After all, what we are talking about is pretty well every construction site that a building firm or construction firm opens up anywhere in the country, unless it is something quite close to their headquarters and in the same area. There-fore, the matter is not insignificant,

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looked at on the national scale, and this requirement would add some element of cost, even if only a small one. I think that the noble Lord's case is at the most not more than marginally made out; but this is not something on which I should wish to divide the Committee. However, I feel it is right to press it fairly hard on the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that he is putting an additional burden on the construction industry here and it will make for additional cost. I shall just have to leave it there, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 91 shall stand part of the Bill?
VISCOUNT SIMON: Before this clause is passed, I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Stonham (perhaps it is a little unfair), whether he recalls that at an earlier stage I raised with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, who was then speaking for the Government, whether, for the avoidance of doubt, it would not be desirable to have a specific definition of "road" in this clause. It arose out of the discussion on an Amendment moved by a noble Lord opposite, who wanted to refer to "public roads". The argument was that roads were already defined. The point is that roads are defined only by inference from the last two lines of subsection (1), which says:
"any expression not defined above which is also used in the Act of 1960 has the same meaning as in that Act".
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, did not have the clause in front of him at the time, but he said, if my recollection is right, that if it was not clear it certainly ought to be made clear. I do not know whether he left the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, a note on this point.
LORD STONHAM: I regret that I was not present when the noble Viscount raised this matter with my noble friend, and therefore I am not aware of the position. I am quite sure that if my noble friend gave an assurance on that point, it is being attended to. But on one or two of the later Amendments tonight we shall be discussing the question of roads, and at least in part I shall be able to clear up the point for the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I am much obliged to the noble Lord.
Clause 91 agreed to.
Clause 92 agreed to.
Clause 93 [Transitional provisions and amendments]:
6.32 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 224B:
Page 124, line 18, at end insert ("where a special authorisation is refused in circumstances which would cause hardship the Licensing Authority may grant a special authorisation for a limited period to alleviate such hardship.")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 224B. The noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, when replying to my Amendment No. 207B, gave an assurance that when quantity licences were called in, or were not renewed, so that undue hardship was caused, there would be grounds for compensation. In view of that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will be able favourably to consider this Amendment, which makes provision for an alleviation of hardship by allowing the licensing authority to grant a special authorisation for a limited period should a refusal cause undue hardship to the firm concerned. This would seem to me to be a reasonable request, for there could be cases of small hauliers' being unduly badly hit by refusal on the part of the licensing authority to grant a full-period special authorisation. I think that what I am asking now is reasonable. The noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, said earlier on that there was provision for compensation. What I am asking for now is that there should be a provision for an alleviation of hardship. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: As I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, seeks by this Amendment to empower the licensing authority, in any case where he would otherwise have refused to grant a special authorisation, to grant one for a limited period if in his view hardship would otherwise result. Under Clause 74 the licensing authority must grant the authorisation if satisfied that carriage by rail would be less advantageous to the consignor in terms of speed, reliability and cost and assurances to that end have been given in another place, and have

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been repeated again to-day by my noble friend Lord Winterbottom. And these factors, as my noble friend said, will be interpreted very widely. I recognise, however, that the provision does not refer to the advantage or otherwise of the public haulier who carries goods on behalf of someone else. I think this is the point the noble Lord has in mind.
The Amendment, if accepted, would allow a licensing authority to take account of hardship to such a haulier. But, in our view, the Amendment would weaken quantity licensing to a quite unacceptable degree, because it would allow the licensing authority to take account not merely of hardship to the consignor if the goods were sent by rail, as the Bill already does, but also hardship to the public haulier. Probably in most, if not all, cases where a public haulier was refused an authorisation he would be able to contend with some reason that the resulting loss of business caused him hardship—the loss of a customer or part of a customer's work. If his contention were accepted, and if all such contentions were accepted—if everywhere the licensing authority decided that there must be no loss of business to the road haulier—the effective introduction of quantity licensing would be inevitably postponed —it might be for ever. This of course may well be what the noble Lord has in mind, but it certainly is not consonant with the purpose of the Bill or of this clause.
I would remind the noble Lord that there is already one case in the Bill which provides that such hardship should be taken into account. Subsection (5)(a) of Clause 93 allows the Minister, by regulation, to direct licensing authorities to call in "A","B" and "C" licences before their normal date of expiry, if he wishes to hasten the change-over to quantity licensing. If this happens any operator whose licence is called in, and who fails to obtain a special authorisation under the ordinary criteria of speed, reliability and cost, can ask the licensing authority to take financial hardship into account as an additional criterion. The licensing authority can in these circumstances grant a special authorisation, which would expire on a date no later than the date on which the called-in licence would normally have expired. In view of the fact that adequate notice will he given to operators about the start-
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ing date of quantity licensing, and of the existence of a concession already in the Bill to deal with hardship, the Amendment is unnecessary.
As your Lordships know, when I was speaking on the Benches opposite I was constantly and persistently drawing attention to the special advantages which the road haulage industry enjoyed, at the taxpayers' expense, as compared with rail. We are now in some ways redressing that gross disadvantage. If in the process some hauliers get less business, and if this is done properly, in the sense that the business will be transferred to the railway without causing any hardship to the consignor in the way of flexibility, cost, convenience or speed, surely that is a good thing for the country as a whole. That is the object of this Part of this Bill, and it is something that I think we ought to support. Therefore, apart from the case that is provided for, I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, that there is any case for the kind of hardship which is the substance of this Amendment; and I hope that, however unhappy he may feel about that, he will nevertheless feel it just and that the Amendment should not be pressed.
LORD MERRIVALE: I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for his reply. I had particularly in mind the hardships, not so much of the consignor but of the haulier. If I understood the noble Lord aright, he said, in effect, that if there was undue hardship then under the Bill as it stands the licensing authority would be empowered to grant a special authorisation so that the haulier would not be pressed or pushed out of business. In view of that, and also because the noble Lord said that my Amendment was unnecessary, as, in effect, it was to some extent covered by the provisions of the Bill, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 93 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD DRUMALBYN: May I put one question to the noble Lord on subsection (5) and the power on behalf of the licensing authority to order that a licence shall expire on a date earlier than that on which it would have expired normally? The noble Lord, in his last speech,

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referred to this point in passing and gave the impression that this power would be used only in order to space out, as I understood him, the licensing procedure. In other words, if a licensing authority found that it was more convenient to call in existing licences, and so allow the special authorisation procedure to begin earlier than it would otherwise do in these particular cases, then it could do so.
The first point that occurs clearly is that it must be possible for licensing authorities to find out and to know now at what point existing licences will fall in. I wonder whether the Government are aware of that, and whether they have prepared information for the separate licensing areas. I take it that the licensing authorities themselves could do this. They must know when the licences are going to fall in, so that they can know right away when this is going to happen. It does not very much matter to an individual if, in the end, he gets the special authorisation, but it matters quite a lot if he does not get it. Subsection (6) recognises that in that case there is hardship, and in cases of severe hardship operators will be allowed to carry on the existing licence to the normal date of expiry if it is decided not to give the special authorisation.
I think it is important to know whether there is any other reason than simply the convenience of the licensing authority for the calling in of existing licences before their date of expiry. As the clause is drafted, it does not limit the power to that specific reason. I should have thought that as a matter of drafting it would be right to make plain the reason for which these licences can be expressed to expire earlier than the normal date. This must be a matter of importance to operators, especially in regard to the planning of their own future.
It is also important that a reasonable interval should be given, and expressed to be given in the Bill itself, before the existing licence could expire. I do not know what consideration has been given to this point, but it seems to me quite clear that it is going to be somewhat hard on an operator who is given only a month's notice. From the date of the expiry he would have his three weeks in order to make his further application
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for a special authorisation, but the shortness of the whole period might seriously affect the planning of his operations. I hope, therefore, that this special provision will be exercised with very great restraint. Indeed, I find it difficult to see why it should be necessary at all, because presumably the existing licences are fairly evenly spaced out throughout the year, and in fact over a period of years. But should it be necessary, it seems to me that a reasonable period of notice should be given.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord was quite right in his exposition, as it were, of subsection (6) of the clause, when he said that, on termination of a licence before time (if the licensing authority so proposed) the proposed calling in of the licence could be deferred to the end of the original period on the grounds of hardship. That was a matter to which I referred in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale. On the general point that he has now raised, I agree it is a matter of the greatest importance, and particularly to the road hauliers; and certainly the last thing I would wish is that there should be any inherent injustice—other than what might be regarded as injustice (though I do not accept it as injustice) arising directly from this change of policy.
However, I think there is some misconception in what the noble Lord says, because he speaks of individual operators. I know that in the last analysis it is the individual operators with whom we are concerned, but the Minister has undertaken—and if the noble Lord is not aware of it, I give the assurance now—that adequate notice will be given to operators per se about the starting date of quantity licensing. Nothing with regard to an individual can be done until there is a starting date for the system as a whole. In view of that fact, that adequate notice will be given, and the existence of the concession in the Bill to deal with hardship, I feel that the position is satisfactory.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: In thanking the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for his further reply, may I say that in the last four hours we have traversed quite a large number of points in connection with this Part of the Bill and quantity licensing, and it is obvious that

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there are very many and very serious anxieties still remaining with regard to many parts of it. There must be general relief all round on the Government Benches that the Bill as it now stands cannot come into operation until 1972.
Clause 93 agreed to.
Schedule 10 [Amendments consequential on Part V]:
LORD STONHAM: This Amendment and the subsequent ones were formally dealt with together with Amendment No. 180 moved by my noble friend, Lord Winterbottom. I beg to move Amendments Nos. 225 to 231.
Amendments moved—
Page 228, leave out lines 25 to 34.
Page 229, line 45, at end insert ("and Schedule 9 thereto").
Page 229, line 50, after ("of") insert ("or Schedule 9 to").
Page 230 line 4, at end insert ("and Schedule 9 thereto").
Page 232, line 7, after ("of") insert ("and Schedule 9 to").
Page 232, line 13, after ("of") insert ("or Schedule 9 to").
Page 232, line 16, column 2, after ("of") insert ("and Schedule 9 to").(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
Schedule 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 94 [Vehicles and drivers subject to control under Part VI]:
6.50 p.m.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL THE DUKE OF ATHOLL moved Amendment No. 231A:
Page 125, line 20, leave out subsection (1).
The noble Duke said: I beg to move this Amendment. I put it down for three reasons: first, because I wondered whether this particular subsection was really necessary. It does not seem to add anything constructive to the Bill. In fact, I should have thought that it was more suitable in the Explanatory Memorandum at the beginning of the Bill. I think this can be said for it: that it adds a pious hope and it explains the reasons for this Part of the Bill. All the same, I am surprised that it actually appears in the body of the Bill, although I fully recognise that
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this is not the first Bill of this sort in which this sort of thing has appeared. I think the 1960 Act had almost the identical preamble before the particular section on this subject. But I should have thought that with an already overloaded Bill we might have made an economy of print and got rid of these six lines or so. Secondly, I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, whether this limitation of drivers' hours has been based on a scientific study, or whether it is purely because of Socialist dogma that we have suddenly had this limitation of hours. Thirdly, and I think most important, is to try to generate a general discussion on fatigue and how it is related to accidents in this country.
On the first point I have nothing further to say. On the second point, the effect of this Part of the Bill will be to increase substantially the cost of road transport as opposed to rail transport, especially in the more remote areas where the railways are thin on the ground, anyway. It will also obviously enormously increase the cost of long-distance coaches. Once again, this will give the railways a cost advantage which they certainly do not possess at the moment. Let me hasten to add that I am no defender of coaches as such: I would much rather go by rail. But I recognise that there are considerable savings in money on most long-distance coach routes, and I feel that this Part of the Bill may do much to reduce those savings and thereby make travel more difficult for the poorer people of our community.
On my third point, especially in regard to buses and coaches, there is little evidence of fatigue contributing to accidents to any appreciable extent. I should like your Lordships for a moment to imagine that you are international runners in, say, the three-mile race. You train the whole time, and you gradually become fitter and fitter and you find it less and less exhausting to run three miles. If you suddenly tried to run three miles to-day, probably you would fail to complete the course and would have an accident, even if it consisted only of lying in the gutter exhausted before you got to the end of your route. The average coach driver and lorry driver is much like the fully-trained, fit three-mile runner. He has been specially trained for his job he is used to it, and he is thoroughly fit. The

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people one would expect to be dangerous on the road through fatigue are the private car owners who normally do not drive for more than an hour or two at a time, but who suddenly decide, because it is their annual holiday, to drive from London to Cornwall or to the Highlands of Scotland in one day. These are the people whom one would expect to be the most dangerous on the roads. Yet this Bill does nothing, and in my opinion quite rightly, to try to curtail their driving. All it does is to try to curtail the driving of individuals who are fit and trained for their particular job.
To give your Lordships a few figures in regard to accidents that are due to fatigue in this country, in the case of public service vehicles, buses and coaches, 21 accidents per million vehicles at risk were alleged to be due to driver fatigue. This represented two accidents during the year 1965. It compared with 6,691 accidents per million vehicles at risk which were due to a slippery road or some such consideration. In the case of goods vehicles the comparison is 51 per million vehicles at risk which were due to driver fatigue, and 6,258 due to slippery roads or some such allied cause. So your Lordships can see that a quite small percentage of the accidents are due to alleged driver fatigue.
Some work has been done experimentally on hours when drivers are most prone to accident, but this is quite inconclusive, and none of it shows any dramatic rise or fall after a man has been for more than seven hours at the wheel of his vehicle. It certainly does not show that people's driving deteriorates markedly after a long stint at the wheel. That is quite interesting.
There are many other considerations. For instance, some work by Colquhoun and Corcoram appears to show that circadian variations in arousal may be different for introverts from what they are for extroverts, the latter being less alert during the early part of the day. Therefore, a further prediction is that fatigue could be incurred differently by drivers of different personalities and temperaments. Obviously, it would be quite impossible to legislate for this, and quite rightly there is nothing in the Bill to say that introverts should drive only in the
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morning and extroverts in the evening. That would be patently quite impossible.
It is further argued by the Government that the present law dating back to 1930 must be out of date, but I should like to point out that these vehicles are nowadays much easier to drive than they were in 1930. My noble friend Lord Teviot is going to give some practical examples of this. He has had much more experience—in fact a great deal of experience—of this. I must admit to having no experience of driving a public service vehicle, for the simple reason that I have not a public service vehicle licence, but the vehicles have been enormously improved and are much easier and much less fatiguing to drive than they were in 1930.
This problem has been looked at by the Committee of Deputies of the European Conference of Ministers of Transport. They have made an analysis of all accidents involving coaches on international journeys in 1966, and they could find only one case where suspicion even arose that fatigue might be the cause, and that was not accepted in the verdict at the inquest. The White Paper on Road Safety (Command 3339), said that it was essential to sweep aside haphazard observations and hunches. Have the Government done this on this occasion and in this case? It seems not. I therefore suggest that they should drop the whole of Clauses 94 and 95 and concentrate on the real causes of road accidents, which are bad roads and other allied factors, and bad driving not necessarily due to fatigue.
Incidentally, I should like to congratulate the Government on the success of the breathalyser. I feel that everyone must admit that this has been a success and has had a marked effect in reducing accidents since it has been in operation. But if the Government do not do as I suggest, there is a danger that this will be seen as yet another attempt by them to drive traffic, both goods and passengers, off the roads and on to the railways by artificially raising the price of road transport. I hope that this discussion will be fruitful and that we shall hear from the Minister that they have done serious scientific study into the question of driver fatigue of professional drivers, and that it shows that these drivers deteriorate after nine or ten hours. I have been

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unable to find this out for myself. I beg to move.
7.0 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: The noble Lords opposite are usually most kindly persons, and I am bound to say that I was a little surprised by some of the things said in support of this Amendment. Let us first get rid of the point that there is nothing to be gained from expressing the intention of this Part of the Bill in a subsection at the beginning of it. Of course, the effect of taking out a subsection of that kind is to allow courts to apply the provisions of this Part of the Bill, some of which are penal in character, in cases where they would not wish to apply them if they did not really hit at the mischief aimed at, and it is often advisable for that sort of reason to state generally the mischief that you are trying to meet.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: Would the noble Lord forgive me? Perhaps I did not explain that I put down this Amendment more to induce a general discussion on driver fatigue than because I was seriously going to press it to a Division. I quite agree with the noble Lord it would not be suitable to press the Amendment to a Division, and I fully appreciate his point.
LORD MITCHISON: I do not mind if the noble Lord's first point disappears by contradiction or by agreement, but it was his first point, and I am sure that what he really had in mind was the second and larger point. Somebody once said (I hope I am not breaking too many Rules of Order) that there were "lies, damn lies, and statistics", and if statistics show that a man does not drive any worse because he is overtired, then I would regard them as the kind of statistics to which that observation was directed.
There is occasionally room for quite a lot of horsesense about this kind of subject, and I am sure we all know, and have felt it ourselves in our own lives, that after a time people get overtired and are bound to drive worse. And it is for that reason that there has for a long time been provision about maximum hours of work. I hope the Tory Party will not be false to their best traditions. They sometimes forget that they were the Party which in the beginning of the 19th century introduced art eight hour day—with
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considerable limitations, it is true—and that they took a leading part in preventing, for instance, the employment of children on hauling wagons full of coal underground. We have a murky past in this respect, and I hope the Party opposite will never be false to themselves and forget that they player their part in those days in trying to get people decently treated.
There are two points here. One is the man himself; and the other, of course, is the public. This is surely common to all of us. I remember very well a man in my former constituency who came up once and talked to me about hours, and, to cut a long story short, what he said was that he was deliberately over-working. He knew that he was over-working; he knew he was doing it to the extent of causing himself a certain amount of physical damage, because at that moment he very badly wanted to make some more money. It may be said that anyone ought to be free to do that. I take leave to doubt it. He certainly ought not to be able to do it when it is a question of road safety. That kind of thing makes men do things that are just as much against the public interest as many things which are obviously more wrong and more wicked.
I feel certain that noble Lords opposite, in their hearts, agree with this, and I hope they will not get themselves too much under the heel of the road hauliers. The road hauliers are by no means always right, and this is a case where their record is not too good. The trouble has not been with the big companies, as a rule, but with the smaller ones. Those of us who have had any experience of this kind of thing, must know of cases in the country districts (I do not know so much about London) where small firms have pushed people into driving quite undue hours—undue hours from the point of view of the good of the men themselves and of the safety of the public. This question of public safety is a highly important one. We ought not to have noble Lords opposite—if they do not mind my being slightly—only slightly—impertinent —getting up and even appearing to defend that kind of thing. They will not stand for it, in fact, and if they themselves employed people I feel certain that they would never do it. There is an Amendment later about sporting activities that

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caused me to hesitate for a moment, but perhaps that is not too serious.
On the main point, there can be no question that some provision must be made in a matter of this sort about hours, and it is amply justified not only by common sense but also by experience of many years. We are not for the moment considering whether these provisions go too far in some cases, or do not go far enough, or anything of that sort: we are considering only the broad question of whether it is only Socialist prejudice to say that people ought not to tire themselves driving, and that if they do they become a danger to the public. I am full of Socialist prejudice; I wish it were all as sound as that particular bit.
LORD TEVIOT: There is very little at the moment that I would add to this most interesting discussion on drivers' hours instigated by my noble friend the Duke of Atholl. From my own experience I cannot think of one single accident caused by fatigue. As I said on Second Reading, the main cause of accidents was the driving of "young bloods" in motor cars (happily it can be said that the transport drivers are generally more experienced) who were being extremely careless and not paying attention. I consider it much more important for firms to watch the general state of health of their drivers than to make a cut in the hours. In the case of P.S.V. drivers they are statutorily tested by their company doctor every year when they are 60, and twice a year when they are 65. The doctors naturally pay great attention to their cardiac condition and blood pressure. It is extremely rare for a driver to be stopped from driving, though it does happen. I recall one particular case when a very corpulent and florid looking driver was taken off, despite his indignation. The doctors stood firm; the man was not allowed to drive again for three weeks, until he had lost a good deal of weight. Therefore I deem it much more important to have spasmodic medical checks than to alter the present system of hours, which at the moment works quite satisfactorily.
I should like to make one or two comments on what the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, has said. I would suggest that his constituent would be much better,
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rather than having his hours cut, to see his doctor. About undue hours of work, I was always told by my own firm that any overtime you did was for your benefit; you were not benefiting the company, you did the overtime because you wanted the money.
7.9 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, made it clear that he put down this Amendment to encourage a general discussion, and I very much welcome that suggestion, because this is the first Amendment on Part VI of the Bill, and some of us indulge hopes that we shall complete Part VI to-night at not too late an hour. Therefore, if we have a general discussion now there is a faint hope that it might curtail at least some of the speeches on individual points that we raise later. I was delighted to hear the congratulations from the noble Duke to the Government upon the great success of the breathalyser test. He will forgive me if I say that it brought to my mind the tremendous spate of opposition, criticism and obloquy that faced the Government for months on end when we instituted the breathalyser test. Some of the criticism came from the Benches opposite, although in restrained tones. Now we receive—and we are grateful for—the noble Lord's congratulations. We know there has been at least a 20 per cent. cut in the number of fatal accidents and injured. Overall, from the point of view of safety, the question of drivers' hours is equally important.
It might be helpful if at this stage I were to say a few words about Part VI of the Bill as a whole. It is a complicated Part of the Bill, and I make no apology for that because its complexity flows from the need to have flexibility in the working of the new rules concerning drivers' hours. It is worth looking at the proposal as a whole before we get involved in the detail. The noble Duke spoke about the effects of the curtailment in the hours worked by drivers. Let us first consider what those hours are and how they compare with the present day. The first thing we learn is that they have not been changed for forty years. A totally different set of circumstances now operates on the roads. Forty years ago when I took a large car out, I took a quart of oil to put in after 50 miles; and travelling at 30 m.p.h. one passed most

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things on the road. There was very little real traffic worth talking about. And yet the same conditions apply to drivers to-day, when on many weekends the roads are almost unusable because of the density of traffic. The rules of forty years ago apply at present to all lorry, bus and coach drivers, with very few exceptions.
What hours can a lorry driver legally work? A lorry, bus or coach driver can work for his employer for 14 hours a day seven days a week, legally. This is the situation which we are considering. This is the situation which we are being asked to preserve in the Amendments we shall be dealing with. This is the kind of thing which in this civilised country of ours we are asked to continue to tolerate: 98 hours work a week out of 168 hours day and night in every week. He may not drive or do any work in connection with his vehicle or his load for more than eleven of the 14 hours. But there is nothing to stop him doing other work: for his employer during the remaining three hours. Furthermore, he can spread the 11 hours of driving over the 14 hours so that he can be at the wheel of his vehicle, perhaps a heavy lorry or double-decker bus full of passengers, during the 14th hour after first signing on for the day. In other words, he can start at 8 o'clock in the morning and still be at work after 11 at night and he can do this every day in a seven-day week.
The noble Duke spoke about an Olympic athlete who trains, reaches a peak of perfection and on the great day achieves great deeds. He likened him to our bus drivers. I thought that it was a very fair comparison. They do great deeds every day, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, that they are safe and wonderful drivers. But if we are having the analogy of an Olympic athlete, these bus drivers do not do their great deeds and then go off and have a few pints and go out of training. They do it seven days a week, 365 days a year. Legally, they can do this. This is what we are asked to perpetuate. These are terribly long hours in to-day's traffic conditions, even for professional drivers who can cope with these things better than those of us who drive a car now and then. Speaking for myself, five or six hours' continuous driving is quite
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a stint. Because of this and because there is a real risk, indeed almost a certainty, that the excessive fatigue caused by these long hours can lead to accidents, the Government have decided to reduce the limit to something more akin to traffic in the 1960s rather than in the 1930s. I am sorry that there are not more noble Lords present, since I was going to appeal to all noble Lords to approve this decision and to bear it in mind when we consider Amendments later on. We think that the redactions in hours, which are to be made in two stages, will give the industry reasonable time to adjust to them.
The noble Duke asked about research on which a decision is based. Would he like us to be so far behind Europe? Is he aware of the comparisons between our present proposals and the hours being worked in Europe? In this country to-day the continuous duty without a break is 5½ hours driving maximum. Under the Bill we propose that it should still be 5½ hours. Under the draft E.E.C. regulations the European limit will be 4½ hours. To-day our bus and coach drivers can legally drive for 11 hours. Under the Bill in the first stage we propose that they should drive for 10 hours; and the second stage for 9 hours at the wheel. In Europe it is now 9 hours under the E.E.C. regulations. So that it will take us quite a time before we get to the level which is thought proper in Europe.
For the first stage of our proposals the target date is the spring of next year, when we propose to reduce the 14 hour total day to a l2½ hour day. During those 12½ hours a driver must have 1½ hours off, leaving 11 hours available for his employer. He can spend up to 10 of those 11 hours actually at the wheel. During each week he will be limited to a total of 60 hours on duty; and if he is a lorry or coach driver he must have at least one day off a week, or if he is a bus driver one day off a fortnight. At the second stage—I regret to say there is no target date for this—the 12½ hours day for lorry and coach drivers would be reduced to 11 hours. Any time off will have to count against the 11 hours. At the same time the 10 hour limit will be reduced to 9. Bus drivers will be required to have one day off a week, the same as lorry drivers, instead of one day

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off every 2 weeks. Imagine driving a bus for 13 days out of the 14, and doing it every week—and doing it because you must have the money.
It is one of the scandals of driving, whether it be commercial vehicles or others, that the wages are so disgracefully low that men have to work these inordinate hours to get a living so as to keep their families. This is one of the basic rottenesses of this industry. The noble Duke said that people in rural areas have to pay more for their coach trips because coaches are so much cheaper than rail. Most people in this country would rather pay a higher, reasonable fare rather than depend for low fares on sweated, exploited labour. And, not to put too fine a point on it, that is what it is.
Finally, as soon as the devices become available in quantity we intend to require employers—this is another safety measure—to fit automatic time recorders, both as an aid to enforcement and to help firms to achieve better operational control over the use of their vehicles. There is nothing wildly revolutionary about a proposition like this: that in some years' time, with luck and perseverance, we might get down or up to the level of the European countries. I do not think this is a revolutionary objective. I could wish that it were more radical. But we recognise that it is going to lead to some pretty radical changes on both sides of industry. If it is not to result in extra costs in transport, or in low wages for drivers, there will have to be changes involving new running schedules for vehicles and new attitudes on the part of employers and drivers towards working practices generally. These things take time to arrange, and that is why we are having two stages instead of one.
Of course, there will be some hard cases. It will be more difficult for some firms and industries to adjust than for others. But, as my right honourable friend said recently in another place, all change produces problems, and this is one of the great difficulties faced by the whole nation. We are as a nation unanimously in favour of change, provided that we can get all written guarantees that it will not affect us personally, but
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will affect some other chap. We are in favour of reducing drivers' hours, provided that it does not cause us difficulties. And, looking through the Amendments, I feel that that gentle criticism could be applied to some of your Lordships. Even so, the Bill provides, in subsections (10) and (12) of Clause 95, very wide powers for the Minister to grant exemptions by regulation in those few cases where it would be impossible, or unreasonable, for the standard rules to be applied in full. I warmly and sincerely commend Part VI of the Bill to your Lordships, on the grounds that it is a modest attempt to bring drivers' hours roughly into line with the strains and stresses put on them by increasing traffic, while retaining sufficient flexibility to provide more exceptions to the rule where genuinely strong cases can be made out for them.
In moving his Amendment, the noble Duke made an interesting and quite important speech, but I agree with my noble friend Lord Mitchison, that he did himself less than justice, because if some of the things he said are read by people who do not know him well, they could be very much misunderstood; and I regret some of them. The noble Duke asked, first of all, whether subsection (1) is really necessary. Of course he is quite right; subsection (1) merely sets out the objectives of Part VI, and does not impose any requirements. So, strictly speaking, the subsection is not essential. But it is intended, as he thought, to provide a helpful introduction to Part VI, and I thought he might feel that the precedent of Section 73 of the 1960 Act had been hallowed and that this was the one part of the Bill which he would not want to take out. But, certainly, deletion of the subsection would not improve the Bill.
Then he asked whether limitations on drivers' hours had been based on scientific study or Socialist dogma. If it is Socialist dogma to want men to get a fair week's pay for a reasonable number of hours worked; if it is Socialist dogma for us to want vehicles to be safe, and safely driven, and to want the risk of accidents not increased by overwork, then you can call that Socialist dogma. I call it the kind of dogma that any noble Lord in this House ought to support.
The rules are based on scientific study and on the fact that fatigue slows the

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reaction time. The noble Lord, Lord Teviot, has experience of this. It is not only a question of surviving. There are people with 100 mg. of alcohol in every 100 ml. of blood who can still drive—or think they can—without accident. But, of course, it is quick reaction to sudden happenings that prevents accidents, and when people are over-fatigued they do not react so quickly. Even professional drivers get tired, and accident figures are sometimes misleading because it is difficult to assess fatigue at the time of an accident.
I would rather skip over the point about the considerable savings. It was really not worthy of the noble Duke to mention this, considering the way in which those considerable savings become possible. I hope that when these regulations are brought in, and industry adjusts itself, the new methods will provide a more efficient service, and that costs per mile will not thereby be increased. But whether or not this subsection stays in the Bill, I hope that, in the main, your Lordships will support the principles of Part VI of the Bill.
7.26 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: May I thank the noble Lord for his admirable and comprehensive reply to the debate which my noble friend the Duke of Atholl started with his excellent speech. Whether or not we agree with everything that my noble friend said, if it provoked the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, into making such a comprehensive speech we are all grateful to him for that. As the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, knows, it is the Government's obligation to make out their case. The Minister in another place has said that the extra cost of these regulations will be £25 million a year, which is quite a "hefty" sum unless it can be matched by comparable savings on new productivity agreements. So it is perfectly fair to my noble friend the Duke of Atholl to put these issues to the noble Lord, and, certainly for my part, I found the noble Lord's answer extremely interesting.
There are one or two points which I should like to raise with the noble Lord before we leave this question, and I am sure he will not take them amiss. On a small point of fact, could he tell us whether both the E.E.C. regulations to
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which he referred are draft regulations at present, and, if they are draft regulations, can he tell us when it is expected they will be implemented? I accept the general proposition—and I belies it is so—that the hours of work permitted by law here for driving are in excess of those in Europe or America or elsewhere. In addition, I do not disagree that in this respect the law is forty years old, that conditions on the roads have very radically changed in that time, and that the intensity of traffic has changed completely. I accept the noble Lord's general proposition that there is a fatigue clement here, and also the Minister's statement in another place, which the noble Lord repeated here, that written evidence has shown that there is a direct relationship between driver fatigue and slowness of reaction.
On the other hand, my noble friends the Duke of Atholl and Lord Teviot both made a very good point in saying that the professional driver is by far the safest driver—there is no question about that—and that it is not usually he who causes the accidents, but the private driver. That is a fair point and I think my noble friends were quite right to make it. When the noble Lord weighed in, rather heavily I thought, about what he regarded as the rottenness of the industry, with its sweated labour, I thought he was a little overdoing it. After all, some of the financial embarrassments of the industry are due to the noble Lord and his friends opposite. They whacked on S.E.T.; they took away the investment allowances of 30 per cent.; they increased the fuel taxes. They really have not given these bus companies a very good hand.
But, leaving aside these somewhat political overtones and dealing with the strictly practical, I am sure the noble Lord is well aware of the practical problems which confront the municipal bus companies in maintaining their services; the acute shortage of drivers in most of these municipalities. The figures have been given—they were given by the Associated Chambers of Commerce—that the existing position is a shortage of 10 to 15 per cent. and that the effect of the Bill would raise the shortage to 15 to 20 per cent.; and we have it from Birmingham that, in the light of the effects of the Bill, they would have a shortage of something between 200 and 300 drivers. These

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are serious figures. Whilst of course we are concerned for the wellbeing and the health of the individual drivers and the safety of their passengers—and, indeed, the safety of the drivers—we are also concerned to keep these essential public transport services going, and we must have regard to the effects of what we are doing. I agree with the noble Lord: this general debate, this almost "Part VI Stand Part" debate, as it were, is valuable in enabling us to take a general view of all these effects.
I suspect that these shortages can to some extent be overcome by new productivity agreements. Single-manning, perhaps, will help us, especially if conductors can be trained to be drivers—although I do not know to what extent that can be done. In another place the Minister postulated the kind of result that is wanted, and I do not disagree with him. He wants to see as the ultimate outcome one in which the hours are shortened, the earnings of the drivers are maintained, the costs are not increased and the efficiency of the services is maintained as well. That is certainly what I want, as well—I believe it is what we all want—but it is going to be quite a productivity agreement which achieves all that!
In the traverse of this whole subject, my feeling is: Yes, we are right to move, but we must look carefully at the practical effects. We must look carefully at the effects on the marginal and special cases to make sure that the measure we are following is a practical one. But, of course, we must always have in mind the safety factors, which are the concern of all of us. Having said that, I should like again to thank my noble friend the Duke of Atholl for starting this debate, and to say that I think it has served a very useful purpose.
LORD BURTON: The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referred to "sweated and exploited labour", but I wonder whether this is in fact the view of the drivers in the road haulage industry, because it would appear that strikes over the matter of wages have taken place on the railways and not in the road haulage industry. The other point the noble Lord made was that there had been no change in forty years, apparently, in the number of hours worked. But surely there has been an im-
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provement in the standard of vehicles, which must considerably have altered the fatigue rate in driving. Another point raised was on breathalysers. Their introduction has undoubtedly cut accidents, and presumably there will be no change in the law, or no material change, whatever Party is in power. But if it were found that the cutting of drivers' hours was not in fact cutting the accident rate, would Her Majesty's Government reinstate the position or would they leave the hours cut, as they are to be cut at the moment?
VISCOUNT SIMON: I wonder whether I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, one question. I am in complete agreement with what he said in his very full speech. It seems to me that if these reduced hours of driving are introduced, as I believe they should be, then in the case of long-distance transport, both goods and passenger, it may well be necessary to carry a second driver who is able to take over. The question I wanted to ask, as the noble Lord was dealing with the general principles of Part VI, was whether the time spent by the second driver sitting in the coach or lorry, as the case may be, would count against his hours of work. If it did then there would be no purpose in having a second driver. The noble Lord nods to indicate that it would count. In that case, of course, it would be necessary to introduce a fairly elaborate system of staging, similar to the old stage-coach principle, where you change over at stated points and the first driver picks up another vehicle on another occasion.
LORD MITCHISON: Not "to introduce". It is done now.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: When the noble Lord replies to the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, may I ask him whether he will deal with the possibility of the American system of sleeper berths as well? This Bill will alter the general structure of driving. Of course, sleeper berths are illegal at present in this country, but this is how the situation is dealt with both in Europe and in America. It would he interesting to hear the noble Lord on that point as well.
LORD BELSTEAD: I wonder whether I may make a couple of short points which I thought I might try to make on the Motion, That the clause stand part? I feel that possibly by the time we get

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to that Question we shall not be wanting to do that, so may I put them to the noble Lord now? I myself welcome the reduction to ten hours which is in the Bill, because I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Nugent that there is a fatigue factor. I think those were his words. But, following the thinking of the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, I wonder whether a case has been made out on good scientific evidence for the reduction to nine hours, which still remains in the Bill? As the Bill stands at the moment—and this is really the point which I would have sought to make on the Question whether the clause stand part—when the Minister wishes to implement his stage 2 he will have no option under Clause 95(12(a) but to reduce all the hours for everybody who drives the vehicles in Part VI to nine hours.
It may sound a little odd coming from this side of the Committee, but I feel very strongly that if the Minister would only take the power to reduce the stage 2 hours by regulations it could well be that at some future date this could be done in a very much more equitable manner. I am sure I should he completely out of order if I went on to talk about different industries, but I know the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will realise, looking at the Marshalled List, that we shall be talking about different industries and different circumstances. I wonder whether perhaps he might take the point, and might indeed look into it, as to whether it might not be an idea to change Clause 95(2)(a) somewhat, and whether the Minister might not substitute regulations for this.
May I briefly add two more things? My noble friend Lord Nugent asked the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, questions about the E.E.C. plans—were they draft plans, or were they not? We can read a certain amount of dialogue in the Standing Committee proceedings in another place, and also in column 1924 of the Report stage in another place. Particularly with reference to the Report stage, I believe I am right in saying that the reader is given the impression that the E.E.C. countries—and here I am speaking a little more strongly than my noble friend Lord Nugent—will possibly plan to have a 13-hour spreadover which is going to he longer than the one which is in the Bill at the moment and a great
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deal longer than the proposed stage 2. It is true that the E.E.C. countries are proposing to have nine hours at the wheel, but with two days in the week with ten hours—and this, of course, leads straight to the point about flexibility which I think will be repeated again and again in the next hour or so. Also, of course, there is the provision in those countries for sleeper berths—a provision which we do not allow in this country.
I certainly do not want to inject a cheap point, but may I end by picking up the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, about relief drivers? When we discuss the clauses in Part VI, let us not forget that the flat rate contribution of an employer for his driver has gone up since 1964 from 9s. 8d. a week to 41s. 6d.—and it is going higher very soon. When we talk about relief drivers we do not talk about paying a second man his wages; we talk about all the extra stamps involved. Without being impertinent, I shall make no apology for returning again, on future Amendments, to the vital question of productivity. I hope that perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will include a word about it when he comes to reply.
LORD MITCHISON: Before the noble Lord sits down, since he is speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, and, therefore, for the Tory Party, in view of one or two things that have been said in the course of the debate I wonder if he would answer one simple question. Does the Opposition or the Tory Party, whichever he likes to call it, stand in favour of the reduction of drivers' hours, or of keeping them the same, or of having no statutory limitation on them at all.
LORD BELSTEAD: With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, I think I stated that in the very first words of my speech.
LORD MITCHISON: I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I did not hear. Perhaps he will tell me.
LORD BELSTEAD: I appreciate that the noble Lord with his experience is quite right to point out that although I am speaking from a different place I used the word "I" at that moment. I said that I welcomed the reduction to 10 hours but that I queried (and I

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said that I followed the noble Duke in his thinking on this matter) the scientific evidence for the reduction to 9 hours, the power for which still remains in the Bill.
LORD STONHAM: I am grateful for the questions addressed to me. I am sorry that I did not comment earlier on Lord Belstead's change of place. I can only say that I mentioned last week the view held by one of his noble friends that it would not be long before he moved forward. My forecast has not taken long to be fulfilled. With regard to the noble Lord's point about Clause 95(12)(a), the reduction to 9 hours at the second stage being brought about by regulations, I must tell him that when the 10 hours are reduced to 9 it will be for all vehicles. It makes no practical difference, therefore, whether this is done by order or by regulation. It will be for all. Later we shall be discussing a number of Amendments concerned with exceptions; and there are provisions in the Bill for exceptions. With regard to a number of points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, may I say that the E.E.C. regulations are draft regulations. I thought I had said so; I knew they were and meant to say so. I must add that although I do not know when all the E.E.C. countries will ratify, these draft regulations are, in fact, based on the hours currently worked in this industry in a number of European countries. Therefore we are, as it were, comparing like with like.
A point was made with regard to the additional costs to which transport companies have been put by Government action. The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, mentioned, for example, that flat rate contributions had gone up from 9s. 8d. to something over £2, and the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, reproachfully mentioned S.E.T. so far as the bus companies are concerned. But the bus companies get a full refund of S.E.T. It costs them nothing. I think the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, will agree that their refund, paid three-monthly) should come off the 40s. that he mentioned as being paid out. The employers get a refund of 25s. a week in respect of each male employee. They will receive new bus grants under Clause 32 of this Bill. They receive sub-
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stantial relief from fuel tax on the stage services: the sum of £17½ million is involved, including the extra amount under Clause 33 of the Bill.
With regard to the assessments of the difficulties of operators when these new hours come into operation, I appreciate that this is a matter for careful consideration. It was for this reason that we did not immediately say, in the first stage, that drivers must have one day off in seven. We left it for the time being at one day off in two weeks.
With regard to the question of the effects of a shortage of drivers, I can assure noble Lords (and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, is aware of this) that our proposals have been made only after extensive consultations with operators' organisations, unions, and other interested bodies; and that what has been produced has been as a result of those discussions. So far in these discussions we have not yet taken account of improvements in productivity. We hope to get more productivity not only on the railways but also on the roads and in the buses. The noble Lord, Lord Burton, asked me whether the long hours would be restored if the accidents were not reduced. I cannot give an undertaking on that. I should have thought that, whatever Government were in power, it was highly improbable. I think there is general acceptance (and this was confirmed by Lord Nugent) that overlong hours are being worked in this industry.
My noble friend, Lord Simon, asked me about the second driver in the cab of a lorry. I nodded to him and indicated that that counts against the permitted hours. This happens now; although it does not happen now for buses. But it will apply to buses under the Bill. I am afraid that sleeper berths will not affect the situation. I hope I have answered all the questions. I think it has been an extremely useful debate and I am grateful to the noble Duke for instituting it in this way, because a general discussion of this kind is very helpful.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and to say I am entirely unrepentant about the way in which I introduced this discussion. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has not produced any

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real scientific evidence to show that fatigue is contributory to accidents. I am quite convinced—but not for the reasons stated in this part of the Bill—that we need to reduce the very excessive hours that some drivers work. Experiments have been carried out on this; and, as I have said before, they are inconclusive. But there has been an experiment on the effect of 12 hours' continuous driving on the time taken to respond to a light signal. In the first three hours the average time was 6·2 seconds; in the second three hours it dropped to 5·2; in the third three hours the average time was 4·6 seconds, in the fourth three hours it increased marginally to 4·7 seconds. It was still nowhere near as bad as it was in the first three, or even the second three, hours.
A controlled experiment was carried out in America on the number of near misses that truck drivers had in a 9-hour drive covering 250 miles. The average number of near misses in the first hour was about eleven and it dropped to one in the ninth hour. There may have been other reasons for this—the density of traffic may have been different, and no doubt the roads were very different—but I think it all tends to show that it is not fatigue that we are trying to get rid of, but the excessive hours that some of these drivers work. I am quite convinced that there are very good social reasons for trying to get rid of those excessive hours, just as in one's own business one tries to cut down an enormous amount of overtime by such things as incentive schemes. I think it a very bad thing for people to work 60 hours a week and I am pleased to say that in many of the works with which I am connected, thanks to incentive schemes, we are able to produce just as much by working an average of about 48 hours a week as we did previously by working 60 hours a week, and, incidentally, the workers are equally well off.
I think it somewhat hypocritical to pretend that it is fatigue that causes accidents because of an excessive amount of driving. There are many good reasons for getting rid of these very long hours, but we ought not to think that in the case of professional drivers fatigue has a major effect on accidents, or that by bringing in Part VI of this Bill we shall
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see a great reduction in the number of accidents.
Finally, may I say a word about breathalysers? I was never opposed to breathalysers, and I think that most noble Lords on this side of the Committee did not oppose them once the random element was removed. I am sure that most of my noble friends would agree that on this side of the Committee, once the idea of having random tests was dropped breathalysers, I do rot say were greeted with great enthusiasm, but at any rate were not very much opposed; and if they were opposed I am quite prepared to admit that we were wrong. I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.54 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK THE EARL OF SELKIRK moved Amendment. No. 231B:
Page 125, line 34, after ("tractors") insert ("except vehicles registered under the Vehicles (Excise) Act, 1962 as agricultural tractors and machines").
The noble Earl said: One thing on which I certainly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is that this is a complicated Part of the Bill. I have no doubt that is due to the hard bargaining which lay behind it. The complicated nature of these provisions has caused a great deal of anxiety in the agriculture industry. We have just heard a very interesting discussion on subsection (1), which indicates that Part VI is intended to apply to "persons engaged in the carriage of passengers or goods by road." What that has to do with agricultural tractors and machinery, I do not know.
It seems to me that the whole of the agricultural aspect of this has been engrafted on to a Bill of an entirely different character. I believe that it should have been dealt with on entirely different lines. It does not need any detailed explanation to see why agriculture has to be dealt with differently. Everyone knows that on occasions agricultural work waits for nobody. When the weather is right it has to be clone, and long hours have to worked. This makes for a clear-cut definition of the vehicles which should be excluded, and which are already perfectly clearly defined in the Excise regulations. I suggest that this is the simplest way in which agriculture might be dealt with under Part VI.
There are a number of other Amendments, and I do not propose to expand on this one, but it seems to be the clearest-cut definition of the sort of thing which could be done. The noble Lord may refer to Section 95(9) which says that no account shall be taken of any time spent driving vehicles in the course of agricultural operations. I do not think that excludes the whole range of written records and inspections which is dealt with later in this part of the Bill. I suggest, therefore, that the simplest way would be to take out those vehicles which are perfectly clearly defined and which I have referred to in this Amendment. I beg to move.
LORD HILTON OF UPTON: I hope that it will be for the convenience of the Committee if I deal with this Amendment and Amendments Nos. 231B, 231C, 241C and 241D, all in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and say a word about each of them. The first would exempt agricultural tractors and machines, and therefore their drivers, from Part VI of the Bill. Amendment No. 231C would exclude farmers' goods vehicles from the "motor vehicles" stated in Clause 94(2)(b)(ii) as being subject to Part VI of the Bill. Amendment 241C would exempt farmers' goods vehicles not exceeding two tons unladen weight from the need to have tachographs fitted to them. Amendment No. 241D would similarly exempt agricultural tractors and machines from the need to have tachographs.
May I first deal with the Amendments relating to agricultural tractors and machines? It is true that these vehicles are likely to be driven on a road only for limited periods, but it is quite likely that in the course of a 24-hour period they will be so driven for more than four hours and it would not be right, where that had happened, to exclude the provisions of Clause 95, relating to restrictions on drivers' hours, merely because of the agricultural character of these vehicles, thus depriving farm workers of the protection afforded to others.
Until quite recently I should have declared an interest when talking about tractor drivers and farm workers, as until a year or two ago I was one of the spokesmen for the N.U.A.W.; but this
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no longer applies. But while I no longer have to declare an interest I feel just as strongly on this matter, because it seems to me that here there is a suggestion of inferior treatment for tractor drivers and farmworkers, compared with people driving other vehicles. Moreover, it must be remembered that persons employed to drive these vehicles may also be required to drive other vehicles of the kind to which Part VI applies for more than four hours in any working day. Where this happens, account must be taken of the time spent by them in driving these agricultural machines, even off the road, for the purposes of reckoning the length of the working day and the number of hours for which the person concerned has been on duty in the course of a working week.
I must point out, too, that if situations of an exceptional kind should arise where there is a need to relax the requirements of Clause 95 as they effect these vehicles the Minister could exercise a power to create exemptions by regulation under subsection (10). This power is inserted to meet special needs arising at harvest time. There would also remain available the Minister's power to modify or change the provisions of Clause 95 by an order made under the powers given by subsection (12)(c) should this be needed to meet any particular difficulties shown by experience to have been created for agriculture by the provisions of Clause 95 as they stand.
So far as concerns the application to agricultural tractors and machines of the provisions of Clause 96—the installation of tachographs—it is certainly not the intention that all these vehicles shall be equipped with tachographs, and this was made clear in the Commons Committee. I repeat the undertaking which was then given. They will be considered for exemption from the provisions of Clause 96 by regulations made under subsection (2)(b) of the clause, so far as may be necessary for this purpose, and accordingly it is unnecessary and unacceptable for a blanket exemption to be written into the Bill.
Now a word on the amendments relating to farmers' goods vehicles. The Amendments concerning these vehicles cannot be accepted, because they can be used on public roads without restriction as to mileage, provided that they carry

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the farmer's own goods or equipment. I assure the noble Earl that Amendment No. 231C is unnecessary, since all goods vehicles, including those registered as farmers' goods 'vehicles, are subject to the provisions of Part VI. It may, however, have been intended that the insertion proposed by the Amendment should be made within the parentheses in Clause 94(2)(b)(ii), in line 40, to exclude farmers' goods vehicles from the category of:
"motor vehicles constructed or adapted to carry goods other than the effects of passengers".
If there are cases for special exemptions from the hours limits to meet a special need, such as at harvest times, the exemption powers in Clause 95(10), as amended by Government Amendment No. 239, are sufficient to deal with them. It would be an unjustifiable safety risk to allow farmers to use their goods vehicles on the roads without any limits on the hours they could drive. For the same reason, their vehicles should be fitted with tachographs.
Although exemption from the record-keeping provisions of Clause 97 is not suggested by the Amendments, I should mention that drivers of farmers' goods vehicles will be required by regulations made under Clause 97 to keep written records. It is an undesirable gap in the present system of control over drivers' hours that drivers of farmers' goods vehicles do not have to keep written records. This is because these vehicles are exempt from carrier's licensing and this carries with it exemption from the keeping of written records. Farmers' goods vehicles will in future be subject to operator's licensing and there is, in any event, no similar link under the new system between operators' licences and written records.
In moving his Amendment, the noble Earl referred to the complications of the Bill. I am afraid that the brief I had for my reply has also been slightly complicated, but I hope that I have been able to make the position clear. For the reasons I have given, I hope that the noble Earl will not find it necessary to press his Amendment.
8.4 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, for his reply to my noble friend Lord Selkirk. Most of his reply seemed
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to me to meet a large part of the case, but I feel a little anxious about the uncertainties inherent in the noble Lord's reply that the Minister's power of making exemptions will meet cases where there is a special need. As the noble Lord knows, there is a great deal of anxiety in the farming world as to how these regulations will affect farming operations.
While I would accept that the general exemption in Clause 95(9) will cover most farming operations, and that the four hours a week will be enough to cover most cases where agricultural vehicles move on the road from field to field, or possibly from farm to farm, there will be some circumstance where they are not. The noble Lord referred to harvest time, and I have in mind the position of contractors of combine harvesters. When combines are engaged in work at several small farms, they will move on the road several times a week. They travel pretty slowly, at five or six miles an hour, so that four hours would be taken up very quickly in moving from one farm to another. That is a case which strikes one immediately and which will have to be covered. No doubt there are others. I should have thought that it would be desirable that the Minister should say now that he is going to make an exemption for such cases so that the farming world have the certainty that this will be done.
I do not think that my noble friend Lord Selkirk would expect all this to he written into the Bill and although it may be impossible for the noble Lord to give definite assurances at this stage, perhaps they could be given at Report stage. This would help to reassure the many people who are anxious about this position. With regard to the "F" licences for farmers' goods vehicles, that is in the same position as the "C" licence vehicle of industrialists, and I do not think that that is a point we should press.
LORD BALERNO: I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, would help me to resolve the confusion in my mind. If agricultural tractors and vehicles are to be exempted by subsequent regulations, I cannot understand why we should not insert this in the Bill. That would simplify the matter for farmers. Farmers are being so confused by so many regulations at this time that

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any new regulations are bound to fog many of them. Not every farmer is as intelligent as the noble Lords who sit on the Government Front Bench, and it is difficult for them to understand these complicated regulations. If they were clearly stated in the Bill, they could be much more readily understood and interpreted by the agricultural Press, and I beseech the noble Lord to consider putting this exemption into the Bill, as my noble friend Lord Selkirk has suggested.
I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Hilton of Upton, has taken into consideration the fact that the driver of a combine or tractor in a field is not doing a nerve-racking job. It is most unlikely that he is going to meet another mechanically propelled vehicle. He has to drive a straight furrow, and there is nothing very nerve-racking about that. He does not tire so quickly as the driver of an internal combustion engine on the road. Therefore, when he comes off the field on to the roads he is not in that same state of exhaustion as a man who has been driving an internal combustion engine on the road all day.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: When I moved this Amendment I said that the agricultural industry was totally unsuited to work under the regulations of this Bill. What the noble Lord has said is that the only possible way we shall work it is by making a whole list of regulations exempting this, that and the other. This is making a farce of legislation. Here we are asked to pass a law, and the Government sit back and vary the law at their convenience. That is a ridiculous way in which to frame legislation. As my noble friend Lord Balerno has said, who is going to understand it? It is difficult enough to understand the Bill as it is written. By the time the noble Lord has "cut loose" with his regulations, practically no one will understand it.
Surely it is in the interests of the public that they should have legislation which they can understand. It is not that people want to break the law, but that they want to understand it. I do not propose to press the Amendment. I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he said. If he can give us any further information, I hope he will do so. It
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is in the interests of the farming community that they should understand what they are being asked to do, and I am sure they would be willing to co-operate if it were made clear. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.13 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD moved Amendment No. 232:
Page 125, line 41, at end insert ("but not to vehicles the unladen weight of which does not exceed 30 cwt.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 232, standing in the names of my noble friends, Lord St. Oswald and Lord Windlesham, and myself. The effect of this Amendment would be to exempt from the effects of Clauses 94 and 95 vehicles the unladen weight of which does not exceed 30 cwt. This is an attempt to deal with such problems as the dual-purpose vehicle that we discussed earlier on an Amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Selkirk, and, indeed, the small van which carries goods and is used for all kinds of purposes.
As the Bill stands, if such a vehicle does more than four hours carrying goods on the road during the week the full effect of the drivers' hours regulations will apply, as in this clause and the next, for every movement of the vehicle during that week. Such dual-purpose vehicles, as we all know, exist literally in their tens of thousands, and possibly in hundreds of thousands. They exist in the world of agriculture and forestry, about which we have just been talking, throughout industry and all over the place. It really would be seriously inhibiting to apply the full rigour of this law in such cases.
As my noble friend Lord Selkirk has said so cogently, most of the drivers and owners of these vehicles will find it difficult to understand the regulations, anyhow and the Bill recognises that we are getting into the de minimis class, because it does not require them to fit tachographs in order to keep an accurate record of what they do. Let us at least have no doubt among ourselves as we discuss the Bill that unless tachographs are fitted the enforcement of these regulations will be quite impossible. As came out to-day in the debate that we had a short time ago with the noble

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Lord, Lord Stonham, the worst cases of driving excessive hours are grotesquely in excess of the existing regulations, mainly arising out of the great difficulty of enforcement. So I make the point that the 30 cwt. vehicle is not to have a tachograph, and there will always be a problem of enforcement there.
But taking the farming world, with which many noble Lords are familiar—as indeed I am myself—many farmers have these small 39 cwt. or dual-purpose vehicles which are used for their own private transport, as well as, to a limited extent, carrying goods in the back when required to do so. If they carry goods for more than four hours a week on the road, then they immediately come within the whole range of the Bill. It may be the farmer, or it may even be his wife, who will then be subjected to the full control of the regulations on hours. So the implications are quite considerable.
I should like also to make the case, with which I know the noble Lord will be familiar, of the agricultural fitter. I have had this case submitted to me, but the noble Lord will know from his own experience that this is quite typical. The agricultural fitter nowadays invariably uses a 30 cwt. van, in which he carries a certain amount of goods, so that he will immediately come within the terms of the Bill. This man is used during harvest time—haymaking, potato harvesting and corn harvesting—and is a vital figure in the farming world. The average farmer nowadays makes an arrangement with his agricultural machinery merchant, and the understanding is that if there is a breakdown the agricultural fitter will come out within a few hours and remain until he has got the machine going again. He carries with him in his van his spares and breakdown kit, and he can repair pretty well anything. In a difficult season, this is the way the harvest is obtained, whether it is potatoes, corn or hay. The more breakdowns you have, the more you depend on this admirable man coming along and working until he has the machine going again.
Machines are very complicated nowadays, and only on the biggest farms can they carry a repair depot and their own mechanics who can do repairs: and it would be a most exceptional farmer who could mend a combine harvester or, indeed, a potato-picker. I can remember
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in pre-war days mending a binder, or even mending the knotter on it; but nowadays one would be utterly defeated. The agricultural fitter is a key figure, but he would qualify so that the Bill would bite on his circumstances. He does not cover a tremendous mileage, but he drives much more than four hours a week, because he drives out from the machinery depot at which he works to different farms and attends to their requirements.
But his hours of work during harvest time would be 70 or 80 hours a week. If, having once driven four hours during a week with his 30 cwt. van, he were to be limited subsequently to 60 hours a week, as the Bill now says, it would mean that some 10 to 20 hours of this vital work that he carries out would be chopped off. This would be—it is no exaggeration to say it—seriously inhibiting and would reduce the farming world's ability to get the harvest in, especially in a bad year. To some extent, similar observations apply to agricultural vets, who also use these dual-purpose vehicles; and similar problems arise in the building world, in the construction world, and no doubt problems at seasonal times, like Christmas, with the mail, deliveries and so on.
I believe that this degree of flexibility with these small vehicles is something that this Bill badly needs. Again, I stress that a large part of this has already been conceded in the exemption of this class of vehicle from the requirement to fit a tachograph. It will always be exceedingly difficult to know just what these 30 cwt. vehicles are doing. I believe there is a good practical case for saying that the Bill will be stronger if this exemption is made. I beg to move.
LORD BESWICK: The noble Lord fairly explained the effect of his Amendment: that it will exempt front these regulations vehicles under 30 cwt. I am very sorry, as this is the first occasion on which I have had the privilege of replying to the points made by the noble Lord, that I cannot give way to him. As he knows, I should very much like to do it, but I fear, certainly on the basis of the case he has made out, that I cannot. As I understand what the noble Lord said, it was because certain exemptions had been made in this category of vehicles that we should make even further exemptions. I should have thought that the

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noble Lord, with his very fair mind, would use the examples of these exemptions to show that we were in fact looking at this problem with a very flexible mind. But, instead of that, he seemed to use them as an argument for going even further. It is perfectly true that we are not being unreasonable; we are not requiring these vans to fit tachographs. It is perfectly true that Clause 96(2) provides for exemption of written records in certain cases. But to go further than that I think would be unreasonable, and the Amendment, I have to tell the noble Lord, is unacceptable on these same grounds of safety.
I cannot understand what the noble Lord was saying about the man who does not drive for more than four hours a week. The noble Lord kept repeating, "four hours a week". Was he intending to do this? He said that if a man was driving for more than four hours a week he would be caught by the rules. That, as I understand it, is not so. Any driver may drive for up to four hours each day and every day.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: A day?
LORD BESWICK: Yes, four hours a day, and he would not be caught. In that case I feel that possibly the noble Lord has misunderstood the regulation and will be able to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD HAWKE: I do not know whether I can quite understand the position from the noble Lord's reply. He is pointing to the exemptions in Clause 96, which talks about the installation and operation of recording equipment. Surely that is a good long way ahead. We have not yet got down to that question at all. Meanwhile, we must consider the question of keeping records. I believe I am correct in saying this. It seems to me, unless I am wrong, that it goes far beyond the question of agricultural service engineers, and so on. Surely, this provision applies to every milk van and every baker's van in the country. If they have to keep to these hours and maintain these records, it will at times be extremely difficult for them to carry out their duties. Sometimes our
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baker comes at peculiar hours. He has been delayed; something has gone wrong with the round. Presumably when this Bill comes into effect he will have to abandon his round at a certain stage and say, "I have driven the regulation number of hours", and then go home. If I am wrong, perhaps the noble Lord will correct me. The same applies to milkmen, and the same applies to every person who runs a small van in this country.
8.24 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: I heard a short time ago that the Tory Party, which presumably includes some of the noble Lords opposite, was in favour of a reduction to nine hours, and was only doubtful whether the evidence supported a further reduction. I believe them to have accepted that. Therefore, I regard the Opposition's criticisms as not in any way impugning their general recognition that there ought to be limited hours, and more limited hours than there are at present. Without going into questions of evidence, common sense or anything of that kind, I should have thought that they were right to accept that. I would respectfully say that I agree with their acceptance, except that I think it does not go quite far enough. But what we are now discussing is exceptions from a general principle which they apparently accept.
What seems to me to lie at the bottom of this discussion is whether Parliament as a body is the right place to make exceptions in a matter of this sort, or whether there ought not to be, as in fact there is in the Bill, a very wide power for the Minister of granting exceptions, including, for instance, exemptions to meet any special need. I do not quite agree with some of the things that have been said. During quite along period as a Member of another place I knew of only one constituency case of a man being killed in agriculture. He was killed because he did not know how to drive a tractor properly and had it on a very dangerous place. I should have thought that that one incident, as it were, served as an example of the difficulty of trying to cover every kind of case by anything other than ministerial regulations and Orders, which can after all be changed from time to time.

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Surely, what we are dealing with in transport, any kind of transport, is something which inevitably changes rather rapidly. One has only to look back quite a short time to find not only that the transport environment is now rather different, as one of my noble friends said, but also that the means of transport are very different. It seems to me that if we try to make the Legislature decide on particular exceptions we shall really end by pleasing no one but a number of road hauliers who, for quite different reasons, cordially dislike the Bill. I agree that they do not come in directly at this place, but that is the kind of situation we get. We get particular interests saying, "We ought to be exempted".
I think that in the field of transport the right person to deal with exceptions is the Minister, and if I am told that that is bureaucracy I would reply that I think it is necessary bureaucracy. I had for a long time to look at all the ministerial Orders that were made, and in fact I think I am right in saying that the Ministry of Transport makes more Orders than any other Department because it has to deal with a lot of matters where there is constant change, not only in types of vehicle but in things like road widths, lighting and a whole variety of matters. I should have thought that exemption in this kind of case was just in point; it was something that had to be dealt with in that way; and that if in fact Parliament tries to make the necessary exemptions in a case of this kind it can do so only in the very broadest terms, as it does in this Bill, and must leave particular cases to the Minister.
There is here, for instance, the exemption in favour of agriculture. Then we are asked, "What about the vet?" and, "What about the agricultural fitter?" I think that if any of us sat down and thought about it we could think up quite a number of other cases, too, which may after consideration—may I put it that way?—be possible exceptions. But I think one ought to be very slow indeed to assume that hours of work which apply in the interests of the safety of the driver himself—to drivers at large—and the safety of the public should not apply to a particular class of drivers. I think that the case for an exception ought to be either self-evident or at any rate proved
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to the hilt. I rather doubt whether it is right to try to do this.
I am allowed to criticise the Bill—noble Lords in front of me cannot very well do that—and I think that some of these Bills go rather too far in trying to make particular exceptions. In quite other fields I remember cases where Parliament tried to do this sort of thing and really over-reached itself, and just provided for, say, half the appropriate cases and failed to provide for the others. So I think you must leave to the Minister the wide power of exemption which he has. It is not in the subsection to which my noble friend referred but in an earlier one. I am sure my noble friend will deal with that.
LORD BALERNO: I think if at the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, is about the most disingenuous I ever heard in my life; to say that you cannot make a clear-cut distinction between the agricultural industry and the rest is arrant nonsense, with all respect to the noble Lord.
LORD MITCHISON: I did not say it and I did not mean it. I quoted agriculture as a case where I thought tae Bill had rightly done it. Now there is an attempt to bring in foresty as another exemption, and an attempt to bring in vehicles under 30 cwt. All I say is that you must have the case either self-evident or abundantly proved. I did not say and I do not mean that there ought not to be an exemption in favour of agriculture. There is one, and I do not disagree.
LORD BALERNO: I think there is a perfectly clear-cut difference to be made between agriculture and other industries, even the other country industries. One might make an exemption in the ease of forestry and link it with agriculture. That would be perfectly sensible. They are industries which derive from the land and the cultivation of the land and there is no major difference between agriculture and forestry in that respect. I support what my noble friend Lord Nugent has said about the agricultural fitter. I think this is most important. The agricultural fitter has his van, 30 cwt. or it may he more or less, and that van is fitted to meet any possible contingency that he is called upon to meet on a farm. Be does not know how long it is going to take. That van may have equipment which

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will allow him to do all sorts of tasks, including welding. As the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has said, it is beyond the capacity of the ordinary farmer now to deal with some of the emergency breakdowns that take place in a complicated piece of machinery like a combine harvester.
I support also what the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, has said about the milk van, although that is directly derived from the agricultural industry and could be included in it. I do not want to weaken my case for agriculture, but I should like to inform the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, that one of the virtues of living in the country in the United Kingdom is that you do get service by the various travelling tradesmen with their vans, and that is a very important thing. You do not find this in the United States of America or in Canada. I question where else in the world you get such good service from travelling tradesmen as you do in the United Kingdom. My American and other friends from overseas visiting this country are amazed at this service by vans delivering and selling locally to isolated communities in the country and the amount of time that is saved for the housewife by being able to purchase at the door and not having to go into the neighbouring small town for her supplies. I support to the utmost the Amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Nugent.
LORD MITCHISON: May I thank the noble Lord for having given me time to look up the subsection I had forgotten. It is subsection (10) of Clause 95.
LORD BESWICK: I wonder whether I might help the Committee and we might reach a conclusion just a little earlier. The subsection to which I was referring was subsection (7). A good deal of the misconception which has arisen is based on the statement or the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, that if a driver drives more than four hours in any one week he is caught under all these various occupations. The fact is that he can drive for four hours in any one day and the exemption is provided for in subsection (7) of Clause 95. I should have thought that that would cover the case of the agricultural fitter. He would come along
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to the farm, driving less than four hours, probably spend all day working on some very complicated job, and he would not come into this provision at all. On that understanding, I wonder whether some of the fears of the noble Lord have not been met.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: May I put the record straight? I must apologise to noble Lords that I made a mistake; I should have said four hours a day, not four hours a week. But the case is there just the same. Naturally, four hours a week would make it fantastically worse, but four hours a day still leaves the problem.
LORD HAWKE: May I put this question? Take the case of the baker or the milkman. His round may embrace a number of calls. Must he keep some sort of record to show that in between his stops he was in charge of a moving vehicle for less than four hours? How on earth does the man with a delivery van prove whether he drives less than four hours when he has an eight-hour-day?
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: I agree with almost everything the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, said, without feeling in any way inclined to support this Amendment. We on these Benches sympathise with the agricultural fitter or the man with the milk van or whatever it may be, but this is a much wider Amendment than that—much wider than the countryside or the agriculture industry. It is to cover vehicles of an unladen weight which does not exceed 30 cwt. I think that is far too wide. Therefore I am rather reluctantly drawn to the conclusion that the right way of dealing with this matter is in regulations made by the Minister, and very considerable allowance is made for regulation both of particular cases and particular classes. Surely that is the right way to do it.
There is no way of producing an Amendment—at any rate, the Conservatives have not yet produced an Amendment—which will exempt these useful, important agricultural vehicles, some of which probably should be exempted from the requirements of this clause, without exempting a wide class of vehicles which almost certainly should not be exempted. I hope that we may have some assurance

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from the Minister that considerable attention will be paid to giving a wide exemption to vehicles in the countryside.
LORD BELSTEAD: May I briefly make a point or two in support of my noble friend Lord Nugent? It seemed that the advantage of this Amendment was that, following Lord Mitchison's point, it was on a broad front; it falls into line with the Government's own generous exemptions. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, says that the Minister must make exemptions by regulations. I do not think the Minister is going to make exemptions very readily unless representations are made to him, and this can best be done by both Houses of Parliament.
There are, I think, three fair points which can be made in support of this Amendment. The first is the point made by my noble friend Lord Nugent—it now seems a long time ago—no tachographs; how do you then enforce? It is a generous Government exemption, but it provides a problem. Secondly, I think it is fair to say that Part VI is aimed at the drivers of larger passenger vehicles and of vehicles carrying goods. Private cars, however, are specifically exempted. Many vehicles included in this Amendment are used for social as well as for business purposes, and on a weight basis this seems to be an important point; they are equivalent to private cars.
I take the Minister's words with a slight pinch of salt, because I do not think they completely prove the case. On Report, in col. 1901 Mr. Marsh said:
"I do not think that anyone who has travelled in a 16-ton lorry can be unconscious of the fact that it is a very different proposition from driving a comfortable, smooth, relatively small car. It is hard work. I sat next to a man who I had admired intensely, who was manipulating no fewer than ten gears. There was a great deal of vibration and discomfort."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 29/5/68.]
Thirdly, there is Lord Beswick's point that the acceptance of this Amendment would mean the acceptance of more and more exemptions. Surely, the strength of this Amendment is that if you bring drivers' hours into line with quality licensing you do rot open the door, in all fairness, to a great many other interests who clamour for exemption, because the Government can, in all
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reason, say: "No, we have simply brought this into line with quality Licensing" The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, and indeed other noble Lords have made the point about vets and representatives, and let us not forget, representatives of vital nationalised boards, people like a gas representative who in the evening may have to answer an emergency. Clause 95(10) may well cover them; but we do not know this, and so noble Lords opposite must forgive us if we on this side of the Committee bring this kind of thing to the notice of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick.
I would suggest that the case for vehicles of 30 cwt. and under is a serious point. They will carry no tachographs. Their inclusion will force their drivers sometimes to choose between breaking the law and failing to respond in an emergency. The anomalies of their inclusion will cause a considerable amount of resentment. The most important point of all, weight for weight, I think, is that they will not affect road safety if they are excluded, and without the Government flexibility in possibly accepting or, at any rate, giving us some form of assurance that they will look at this Amendment the law may simply be brought into disrepute.
8.43 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: It appears to me that this is an issue, or is in danger of becoming an issue, between town and country which I should feel to be a most regrettable thing indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, who lives in Sussex, and I are rural Peers. We feel that, living in the country and being served by these small vehicles which play such an intensely important part in our life, as the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, said, is the normal and the natural thing, and we do not like being treated as an exception; and we are not happy that the Minister, who is more likely than not to be a townsman, would treat us fairly in the matter of granting exceptions. I am well aware that at this stage in the argument and with this actual Amendment before us, the Minister will be unable to make concessions. But if, considering the strength of the purely rural opposition to this clause, the Minister could undertake to give some consideration to our point of view, which has been so well expressed

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on the Conservative Benches, I for one would be most grateful.
LORD ST. HELENS: I feel that the essence of the Government's case, with which basically we on this side of the Committee agree, is that these regulations are made in the interests of the safety of the public; and I feel that one should not get too led away by the arguments of service to the public: in other words, I believe that safety comes before service in the application of these regulations. But I thought that the case so cogently argued by my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford, was that in dealing with these smaller vehicles we are not dealing with vehicles which are on the road for prolonged periods of time; we are dealing with vehicles which are virtually maids of all service; and, as maids of all service, to serve the larger vehicles and elements of machinery and to cope with emergencies, these vehicles surely should have exemption at times of emergency. That, I am sure, is the case that we are putting forward from this side, and we feel it deserves serious consideration.
LORD BESWICK: I am sorry that some noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, seemed to think that we were making some unnecessary attack on the liberty of the drivers in the country. This is not so. We are not extending the restrictions at all, on the category of vehicles which I understand he had in mind. All goods vehicles to-day —and it has been so for some time; even the smaller ones—are bound by the rules. The reason why they are bound is not because there is any conflict between town and country; it is because I believe we all, as the noble Lord, Lord St. Helens, said, have a common interest in ensuring maximum safety on the roads.
What Part VI is about is to be found in Clause 94, where it says:
"This Part of this Act shall have effect with a view to securing the observance of proper hours of work by persons engaged in the carriage of passengers or goods…"
No one is going to be restricted unduly. Driving a vehicle for ten hours a day is surely a reasonable time, and it is not being unduly restrictive to say that there are rules over driving for ten hours a
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day. I should have thought that this was something which we could all accept.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, agreed that we were being flexible so far as the tachographs were concerned, so far as eliminating the necessity for keeping written records. Where flexibility is possible and can be written into the Bill, it is written into the Bill. But in certain other cases which the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, had in mind, it would be quite impossible to write into the Bill descriptions to fit every case. There are a variety of cases which could properly be exempted, but a regulation tailored to meet such a case is much the better way of dealing with this than writing it into the Bill. The noble Lord asked me for certain assurances. I cannot give him an assurance that the licensing authorities are going to negative the whole purpose of this Part of the Bill. But I can give an assurance that in proper cases, where a case is made out, exemptions will be made by the licensing authorities. On that basis, I hope it will be possible for the noble Lord to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, for answering the points we have put to him. I think I should be right in saying that there is a good deal of uneasiness among noble Lords in the Committee and we do not feel entirely happy with the arrangements that the Bill gives in this respect. The Minister's power to make regulations for exemptions here leaves the position vague and uncertain.
The broad problem that we are talking about is, of course, that of mixed work. I apologise again for mis-stating it to start with. The four hours a day would cover quite a number of cases, but certainly not all. We have an Amendment down later and perhaps we can discuss this again. This problem of mixed work is a real one, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, who seemed to doubt the independence of the view that we took, would recognise the intrinsic merits of this. I can assure him that our Amendments have not been solely inspired by road hauliers. If we put down all the suggested Amendments we have received, the Marshalled List would be about six times its present size. We have confined ourselves to what we regard as the major practical problems in the Bill,

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and in this Part of the Bill, where we agree with the general intention, we are concerned simply to try to make it as sensible and workable as possible—as indeed we were with the earlier stages of the licensing Part.
There is no doubt that there is a problem here, and the Bill as drafted would put in great difficulty large numbers of people in the agricultural world. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, said that he accepted this but he did not think it ought to go any further. But the fact is that other people are affected. My noble friend Lord Hawke mentioned the baker. There are not many bakers about who still bake as well as deliver, but there are a few, and they would be caught by it. I have mentioned the agricultural fitter, the vet; and I have no doubt there are many others.
What we are saying is that there is a real problem here. These people will sometimes drive more than four hours a day, and they work long hours because they run their own businesses. Or perhaps they are farmers. Whatever they do, they will have to stop work, essential work, or they will break the law, and if they have not got tachographs on their machines they will probably get away with it. I do not think this is a good solution either way, and that is how I think we all feel. I am not going to suggest that we should divide the Committee on this point, but I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Beswick will take this matter back again and discuss it with his advisers in the Ministry of Transport and with the Minister and have another look at this problem.
My noble friend Lord Belstead, in his very effective intervention, made the point that this particular factor has been conceded on operators' licences, and indeed on quantity licensing generally, for a variety of very good reasons and although it does not seem entirely logical to extend it to drivers' hours I believe that quite a number of the same reasons apply. I confess that I came to this opinion only quite slowly. At first, I was not entirely convinced, but I have now become convinced that there is a big range of practical problems here with which the Bill does not cope and which are not satisfactorily dealt with by making exemptions. In other words, there is a general
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class here, and that is why we have proceeded in the way we have done.
I hope that the noble Lord will give us credit—I am sure he will—for not having argued particular cases or for particular industries. This was done in another place. We have tried to deal with the general principle, and that is the thought that has guided us here. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment, but I hope that the noble Lord will look at it again. Perhaps we can give some further thought to it before we reach the Report stage, and perhaps we can have discussion about it. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.54 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 94 sha stand part of the Bill?
EARL BATHURST: I am not at all happy with the assurance that the noble Lord gave us on the harvest trucks. I feel there could be a very real difficulty here, and I would ask him wt. ether, before Report stage, he would hive a look at this again and ask the Minister if he would give an assurance that he would consider harvest trucks for a suitable regulation. My noble friend Lord Selkirk withdrew his Amendment, but I feel there is a very real problem here for a farmer who has to haul grain during harvest time on the main roads, both for road trucks under ordinary licensing and under the Excise licensing for agricultural vehicles. I therefore ask the noble Lord if he will present that point to his Minister and see if he cannot get us a better assurance by Report stage. Otherwise, I think we must ask my noble friend if he would take further advice and consider putting down a further Amendment on that point.
Clause 94 agreed to.
Clause 95 [Permitted driving time and periods of duty]:
8.56 p.m.
LORD TEVIOT LORD TEVIOT moved Amendment No. 232AA:
Page 126, line 15, leave out ("ten") and insert ("eleven").
The noble Lord said: The reasons for my putting down this Amendment are first, that I considered it unnecessary and

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unjustified to alter the present system of drivers' working hours, and, secondly, that I am sure the drivers do not wish it. At the moment I appear to be horribly alone in this House with my views, but this does not deter me one bit in persisting with my argument. Whilst congratulating successive Governments in their efforts to make our roads safer with M.O.T. tests on vehicles, new tyres, and breathalysers, I do not deem it necessary to cut drivers' hours.
It has already been accepted that transport drivers are, on the whole, a responsible body of men—more so than the ordinary motorist. I also put in a point speaking earlier, about firms paying more attention to general medicals of their employees, though I did not receive an answer. I have also studied the figures issued by ROSPA and have not found any conclusive evidence of an increase in the amount of accidents caused by public service vehicles or heavy transport vehicles. In fact, they all seem to be having a nice decrease. The reason why drivers want to work longer hours is quite simply—and I am prepared to be "shot down" on this—that they need the money, as we all do. And what more honourable way to earn money than to work for it? The Government are crying out all the time for higher productivity, and here are a body of men whose desire it is to work, only to have their hours cut down. After all, there must be a demand for this work, because employers do not pay expensive rates of overtime if the work is not available. You do not find shirkers in the transport industry. The distance has always to be covered, and they cannot be classed in the same way as the factory worker who sneaks off for a crafty cigarette, or office workers for a "chinwag".
There are subsequent Amendments that a man may drive 11 hours a day if he is driving to the ends of our shores. I do not think this goes far enough. I think the 11 hours has to be accepted wholeheartedly or not at all, because if it were proved that it was unsafe to drive for that time, it would be as unsafe to drive to the Highlands of Scotland as it would be anywhere else. In the bus industry, which I know best, services cannot be maintained because of the lack of staff. If hours are to be cut, the men
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will find they cannot earn the same amount of money and thus enjoy the same standard of living. They will go elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that the average basic wages in this industry were very bad, but I would say: put their wages right first, and then talk about reducing hours afterwards. I urge the Government very seriously against cutting drivers' hours, which would only add more pointless confusion and chaos. I beg to move.
LORD STONHAM: I do find it extraordinary that after the very helpful debate we had on Part VI noble Lords are still moving Amendments, and talking and trying to convince the public at large that they are determined that, wherever possible, by hook or by crook, they will force men to work what I regard as overlong hours, and unsafe hours.
As the noble Lord, Lord Teviot sat down, I heard some noble Lord say "Hear, hear!". Is it not about time that when we are considering an Amendment in Committee noble Lords should take the trouble to find out what it is about and what it does? This Amendment seeks to alter the figure of 10 hours to 11 hours. The noble Lord said that the Government were crying out for productivity, as if long hours were synonymous with increased production. I am perhaps one of the few Members of your Lordships' House who for forty years ran a manufacturing business with a number of factories, and I had to contend with the task of production and the problems of industrial relations. In my experience, which covers a large number of industries, there is an optimum number of hours above which productivity goes down not up. You do not produce more; you produce less. So do not let us believe that working more and more hours leads to more and more production.
I thought that we had agreed that there was going to be some sort of general progress in this Bill. At least the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, gave us that impression. But what the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, asks for in this Amendment, if it is agreed to, actually will result in some cases in the working of longer hours than are permitted at present, although everybody is agreed that they are dangerously overlong. If the noble Lord, Lord Teviot,

921
will look at subsection (2) of Clause 102 he will see that driving will mean being actually at the wheel. What he is asking for is 11 hours actually at the wheel. Under the 1960 Act driving is limited to 11 hours, but it includes the time spent by the driver on other work in connection with the vehicle or its loads. So the noble Lord, with all his experience, is asking his noble friends to agree to alter the law so that people should actually drive longer than they do at present. The noble Lord shakes his head. I am telling him the effects of his Amendment. That is why I plead with noble Lords to discover the effect of an Amendment before they move it and not say, "I did not mean that at all. That is not what I meant. I meant something else."
The 11-hour limit has been imposed on driving since 1930. I said earlier that we had not changed things for forty years. Well, that is 38 years, which is not far off. Now we are proposing to make a change. If we were to make this Amendment it would be a retrograde step and out of line with our aim of reducing hours in the interest of road safety. It would also be out of line with the ideas in the rest of Europe. In many countries of Europe they are operating a 9-hour driving day, and draft regulations are being put forward by the E.E.C. countries for approval. I hope that the Committee will feel that we ought not to spend any more time on this Amendment.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: The noble Lore, with his customary dialectical skill, has answered my noble friend's Amendment very effectively; but at the same time he has put the rod across our backs because we supported our noble friend. But we all rather admire the noble Lord, Lord Teviot. He is probably the only professional driver who comes from the passenger vehicle world to take part in the debate this evening. His views are worth having, whatever they are and whether or not one agrees with them. In fact, I do not quite agree with them; I think that there is a case for reduction; but it is interesting to hear from a noble Lord who has been a professional driver. As he sees it, the need is not there and the drivers do not want it.
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We also all admire the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, with his passionate humanity, but I would make the point that, just as he himself finds that hard work is something he likes doing—and he never spares himself, whether it be 8 hours or 18 hours a day, and that is true of other noble Lords in this House —a shortening of hours indefinitely is not necessarily something which makes humanity happier. There is a road safety element involved and we have that particularly in mind, but it is not a bad thing now and again to hear from people who say that they like to work these hours. So I think we were right to support my noble friend.
LORD ST. HELENS: During the long passage of this Bill this is the first time that. I have disagreed in any way with my noble friend Lord Nugent, who from our side has conducted proceedings on the Bill admirably. In this case I do not agree that the Minister has answered my noble friend Lord Teviot very effectively. The Minister's case was that on Lord Teviot's argument drivers would be forced to work longer hours. My noble friend suggested nothing of the sort. He suggested that drivers should be allowed to work longer hours. That is a very different matter.
The Minister brought up the question of productivity. Would he be kind enough to explain something to me? Throughout proceedings on the Bill in the Commons on this Part of the Bill there was great talk about reducing the hours of drivers but not reducing their pay because the Government would arrange for greater productivity. May I ask how one reduces the hours of a man driving a bus or any other public service vehicle, does not reduce his pay and yet arranges for greater productivity on his behalf? That has never been explained throughout the proceedings on the Bill. We should listen avidly if the Minister could take a few moments to explain to us how to increase the productivity of a driver whose driving hours have been reduced.
LORD SOMERS: Before we leave this Part of the Bill, I wonder whether I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, to say a word about the wisdom of charging the maximum from a time basis to a mileage basis. I am thinking of a journey

923
which normally takes perhaps 10¼ hours. Under the new regulations, that will either have to be speeded up or abandoned altogether. Is there a possibility that the less responsible firms will urge their drivers to go a little faster, in order that they can do it within the time permitted? If so, that will not make for safety on the roads. Of course, that would not apply to all vehicles, as steamrollers and similar vehicles would still have to be on a time basis. But not everybody has had the privilege of driving a steamroller.
LORD BURTON: The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, keeps referring to the Continent. Am I not correct in thinking that on the Continent a sleeping compartment is allowed, and so long as one of the drivers is in the sleeping compartment the time does not count? Furthermore, what happens in the event of a breakdown, or if there is some blockage on the road which prevents a driver from completing his journey? Is he deprived of the chance of getting home that night? Or what is the position?
LORD TREFGARNE: I should like to take up the point of my noble friend Lord St. Helens on productivity. If we are reducing the number of hours that a London Transport driver works, how on earth are we going to increase his productivity, or even keep it at the same level as before? If he drives for fewer hours, the ordinary bus driver will simply complete fewer stages. So to say that we can increase productivity to make up for the reduction in hours, is very difficult to understand.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: Surely what a bus driver does is to convey passengers from A to B. If he does that for 12 hours, he will convey more people from A to B than if he does it for 11 hours. Even with the aid of only the back of an envelope and a blunt pencil, that seems obvious.
9.11 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: This is a very interesting and revealing discussion which only emphasises what I said earlier, and I need not add very much to it. The noble Lord, Lord Somers, raised a point about hours or mileage. He thought people might attempt to make the journey more quickly and therefore less safely.
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I can only say that, so far as my own driving experience is concerned, I have not noticed vehicles taking it very slowly under present conditions. It has been my lot—and I have no doubt it has been the lot of other noble Lords—to be driving at what I regard as a reasonable speed and then to be pressed from behind, and passed, by huge vehicles which do not seem to be inhibited about speed. But it is quite hopeless and impossible to control this on a mileage basis. While low mileages are naturally common in towns, the volume of traffic in towns is far greater and mileage cannot directly be related to fatigue or, indeed, to hours worked. It depends on other circumstances.
The noble Lord, Lord St. Helens, asked me how to increase productivity by reducing hours. The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, asked almost the same question, and the noble Viscount, Lord Stone-haven, said that you will take more people from A to B if you work longer. If noble Lords are prepared to stick to that theory, then the only solution to our traffic problems is for every driver to work not 14 hours a day as they are allowed to do, but 18 hours a day. That is the theory and it must be developed that way. Nobody has said this, but we are considering an Amendment which would permit employees to drive for longer hours than they do at present.
The noble Lord, Lord St. Helens, asked how to increase productivity by reducing hours. It has been the experience of those of us who have any intimate knowledge of industry that in many cases productivity is increased by reducing hours, because at the same time you have to have different forms of management. At least 20 years ago I went to one of the then new Government factories which was just starting in Wales. It was a Wolverhampton firm, and I asked how many hours they were working. I was told 35 hours a week—and this was 20 years ago, when the normal working week was 45 hours. I asked why they were working ten hours less, and they said "Because we produce more". That was the answer. I agree that when we are thinking of an industry in which men are permitted by law to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week-98 hours a week—and in which they are permitted by law actually to drive for 77 hours out of those 98, it is

925
not perhaps so readily understandable that if you reduce that number of driving hours to 60 they might well do more in production, even in the carriage of passengers. But the first thing is that there will be less sickness; there will be less absenteenism; and there will be greater efficiency in performing their service. In the case of a bus driver, of course, you would not expect him to drive his stage in a lesser time than that permitted; he has to keep to a timetable. But there is a greater likelihood of him keeping to his time, of giving a better, a more even service, during the whole of the journey, and in that sense there is a great deal of opportunity for increased productivity. That is the answer.
LORD ST. HELENS: Will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him? This argument was produced in the Commons by his right honaurable friend the Minister time and time again without a single concrete example. The presumption behind the whole argument is that private firms which are running bus and other services to-day, upon the existence of which their profitability depends, are making an absolute hash of their timetables, of the organisation of their operators, and all the rest of it, and that suddenly, because the bus industry is nationalised and the hours of driving reduced some extraordinary wave of efficiency is going to come from nowhere and put the whole thing on a profitable basis. Not one single concrete example has been given throughout the whole course of the debate on this matter in either House.
LORD STONHAM: It is most unfortunate that when I was in the middle of giving such an explanation—the first one, the noble Lord says, which has been given in either House—he thought fit to interrupt me and to stop me giving it. May I therefore continue, so that the noble Lord will not in future be able to say that no kind of answer has been given in either House? There are other reasons and measures for increasing productivity—the reorganisation of services; the increased used of one-man buses, which can be accomplished far more easily if the men are not working excessive hours. If you have two men and pay them, hypothetically, £18 a week each, then one man to whom you
926
might pay £20 or even £22 a week will give you far greater productivity and, incidentally, will help to solve the problem of wages, to which the noble Lord referred.
Productivity does not only mean shorter hours for a driver: it means more efficient operation of the undertaking, so that they may be able to maintain drivers' earnings notwithstanding. It has been fully recognised that the introduction of the new methods must be phased in with productivity, and both sides of the industry must consider this seriously. It really is unhelpful for noble Lords to suggest that it cannot be done, because it can be done, and there have been many proposals which are being considered by both sides of industry to bring this about. I hope, now that I have given in a way the noble, Lord will understand reasons and ways in which productivity can be increased, he will not make his statement again.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: In this particular industry I do not see how you will get increased productivity unless you drive the vehicle faster. Of course, if, instead of driving at 30 m.p.h., you drive at 60 m.p.h., you then get increased productivity—you go double the distance. That is what I can see could well happen. But I thought this Bill was here to produce greater safety. As I see it, the only way you will get productivity in this particular type of industrial activity is to drive a good deal faster, and that will not increase but decrease safety. Is that what the Government want? That seems to me a magnificent way of increasing p-oductivity—to get greater productivity and have more accidents on the road! That seems to me the kind of difficulty in which the Government are landing themselves in this Bill, as in other spheres of legislation. They say one thing and do something else. Here is another example.
LORD STONHAM: This is quite disgraceful, and quite unworthy of the noble Lord. The whole of this debate has had its basis in safety; and here is the noble Lord saying, without any kind of justification whatsoever, when every speech on that side of the Committee has been in favour of either maintaining the present very long working

927
hours or even, as his noble friends wanted, to make the permissible driving hours longer than are at present allowed, that this is going to decrease safety on the roads.
Only two minutes ago I gave a number of examples of increased productivity. I will spell it out again to the noble Lord. If you have a larger bus with two men, you do not have to drive it faster in order to increase productivity. If you have a bus which is so adapted—and I will send the noble Lord particulars of how he can go to see one—as to be a large and safe bus requiring only one man to staff it, you have increased productivity in that way. If each hour of the shorter working day was more fully occupied than those of a much longer working day, again you increase efficiency and certainly also safety. That is what we are trying to do in Part VI. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, and other noble Lords opposite have conceded this. All that I am pleading is that, having conceded, as generally speaking has been conceded, the principle of Part VI, please do not let us keep on pushing for exemptions which, if we are honest, we must realise will have the effect of destroying that which noble Lords have said they support.
LORD WAKEFIELD OF KENDAL: I should like to point out that it is not only capacity that increases productivity. There is such a thing as frequency of services and providing the customer with what he needs. This could lead to a very wide discussion on a very wide subject. I have myself pointed out the difficulties of this particular industry when one is talking of increasing productivity.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: We have covered a very large field here. Once again it is clear how interested noble Lords are in this matter. Although I feel that the Government's broad policy here is right, the Government must be aware—as I am sure is the noble Lord, Lord Stonham—that it is going to be most difficult in the passenger service vehicles to get productivity to match the reduction in hours that we want. That is particularly so in the stage carriage field. Therefore the services are in danger; and, as noble Lords know, the municipal bus managers have been
928
making strong representations. Although they have been persuaded to accept the situation, they are uneasy about it. When we come to talk about commercial goods vehicles, we find the scope for increased productivity is very much greater for a whole variety of reasons. I think that this debate has clarified the problem. While, for myself, I think that we should accept the line that the Government have taken, it leaves them with rather a difficult problem.
LORD BALERNO: I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, fully understands the principle of the law of diminishing returns. The law of diminishing returns varies according to the circumstances to which it is applied. It is obviously a completely different application when it is applied to industry from when it is applied to transport. The law of diminishing returns should be worked out according to the enterprise involved; and it will be worked out by the people responsible for the conduct of that particular enterprise who will discover for themselves at what point the law of diminishing returns operates. It is therefore, to my mind, the duty of Parliament to establish a ceiling beyond which the law of diminishing returns is most unlikely to operate. In that respect I support the Amendment of my noble fried, Lord Teviot, because I think he has set, as it were, the ceiling for this law of diminishing returns, and the individual entrepreneur conducting a transport business will discover for himself, within that ceiling, what that limit is. I hope that the noble Lord will not be unduly tempted to withdraw his Amendment, and I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, will yield to the persuasive argument so ably put forward by my noble friend.
9.25 p.m.
LORD TEVIOT: The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and I seem to be agreed that this discussion has been more than revealing. I have been very interested to hear all the remarks that have been passed, but I do not intend to detain your Lordships by going into them individually. Before withdrawing the Amendment I should like to ask a question of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. He says that I am asking for more hours than there are now. The noble Lord has

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said that the permitted hours are a 14-hour working day, of which 11 hours may be used for driving in a 77-hour week, I am proposing to keep the figures as they are, so would he please clarify that point and indicate that I am not asking for more than is recognised now?
LORD STONHAM: The reason the noble Lord is asking for longer driving hours is this. The Bill we are considering provides for 10 hours actual driving time. His Amendment would make it 11 hours actual driving time, which is a longer driving time than is permitted at present. The question we have to decide is whether the noble Lord and his friends actually want to go on record as voting for longer driving hours.
LORD BESWICK: Let them divide on it.
LORD TEVIOT: I am not certain that I understand that. Will the noble Lord please tell me what are the permitted hours at the present time? I say that they are 11; he tells me they are not. What are the permitted driving hours at the wheel? Could he answer that?
LORD MITCHISON: I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, will not be deterred. I have listened with great amusement to his noble friends on the Opposition Front Bench saying one thing and the "tail" behind "wagging the dog". I hope that the tail will succeed in wagging the dog and making the last split in the Tory Party more abundantly clear than it has been over the last half-hour. Go ahead—divide!
THE EARL OF DUNDONALD: Could we not have an answer to my noble friend's question?
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Answer!
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My noble friend Lord Teviot is correct. On my information, he is correct and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is wrong.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: At any rate, even if my noble friend's Amendment were carried, it would be limited to a six-day week, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Stonham has never stopped telling us that at the moment it is seven days a week, and that this would be the case so far as the non-fare stage buses are concerned.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Answer!
LORD STONHAM: I was perfectly correct. The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, says that I was not correct. But the point is that of the hours worked now, the 11 hours which are permitted in almost every case, some of the time is taken up not by driving but by loading the vehicle and other jobs of that kind. But under the Bill we are considering the 10 hours would be 10 hours driving in the first stage, and subsequently in the second stage, when it comes about, nine hours. His noble friend has asked that this should be 11 hours and under the terms of the Bill it would be 11 hours driving. Therefore I am quite right in saying that he is asking for more driving hours.
LORD TEVIOT: I am not altogether satisfied. The 11 hours which the noble Lord has said is driving time would of course, include stand time, and it would not be more than at the moment The point I was making was that I was just trying to leave things as they are. However, in view of the lateness of the, hour I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD WIGG: Before the noble Lord withdraws the Amendment, I must confess that my noble friend, speaking for the Government, has somewhat confused me. He is dogmatic on the question of working hours and driving time. I want him to spell this out, not in terms of tails wagging dogs or the law of diminishing returns, but in terms of what happens to the driver of a horse box. If such a driver goes to a race meting and is left swinging about while the races are on, may I take it that the only way the rule will be broken is if during the course of that day he spends actually 10 hours' driving? That is what my noble friend said, and he will worry a great many people who are not absolutely clear on the point. I must confess that his reply was not so clear and dogmatic as I would wish on this point. May I repeat the question'? If a man starts off in the morning with a horse-box and goes to a race meeting, does it mean that lie is absolutely all right so long as he does not spend more than 10 days at the wheel?
LORD STONHAM: My noble friend asked me what would happen if a man spent 10 days at the wheel—I should say that that is impossible. Probably

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my noble friend meant 10 hours. This is one of the cases which would be considered by the Minister and which could be dealt with under the regulations that we were discussing earlier. The point is that, even without regulations under the Bill, it would be perfectly proper for a man to drive a vehicle for 10 hours' driving time, and his working day could be 121 hours, perhaps longer. The particular case cited by my noble friend is one of which we are aware, and it will be considered in general by my right honourable friend as a subject for regulation.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
9.33 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE LORD MERRIVALE moved Amendment No. 232B:
Page 126, line 15, at end insert—
("Provided that he may drive an extra hour on not more than two days in a working week".)
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 232B. The reason why I am moving this Amendment is so that Clause 95(1) shall read as follows:
"Subject to the provisions of this section, a driver shall not on any working day drive a vehicle or vehicles to which this Part of this Act applies for periods amounting in the aggregate to more than ten hours, provided that he may drive an extra hour on not more than two days in a working week".
The object of this Amendment is to preserve much needed flexibility to deal with peak demand and seasonal demands. I should like to refer to a few examples of how this Amendment would assist certain industries. If we take the case of the brewing industry, there can be heavy demands in hot weather and around Bank Holidays. If we take the fuel industry, there can be heavy demand in cold weather, when ice and snow go to make backlogs and orders build up. In the agricultural and horticultural industries there can be peak demands on transport facilities at harvest time, in moving produce to storage or to point of sale when in prime condition. That might cover the whole range of fruits and vegetables grown in this country. If I have the permission of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, to continue with my speech, I should like also to refer to the catering industry. Here, again, heavier demands are made on supplies of ice cream around Bank Holidays.
I think that the flexibility I am asking for in this Amendment can be useful to a large number of industries. This flexibility is essential, because under the proposals in the Bill it would not be possible to give livestock and perishable produce the present pattern of distribution. This is according to a statement made by Mr. Brighton, the chairman of the National Farmers' Union Transport Committee. Surely the farmers should not be denied the right to vary their arrangements according to the dictates of the weather.
I would add that this required flexibility is in line with standard Continental practice. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referred to standard Continental practice or to E.E.C. regulations, and it will be exactly in line with Continental practice when, as the noble Lord mentioned on the previous Amendment, the driving time in this country is reduced from 10 hours to 9 hours. I am quite certain that this meets with the wishes of a number of drivers (this has not been mentioned before), who would welcome the extra amount in their pay packet. I do not think it is pressurising them in any way to work longer hours every day. I am asking the Government to agree to extra flexibility on two days a week. The alternative to this desirable flexibility would be more drivers and more vehicles, and I am sure the Minister will agree that this would be uneconomic.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: I wonder whether it would be for the convenience of the Committee to discuss the next Amendment, No. 233, with this one, because it covers almost exactly the same ground. We have put this Amendment down as a probing Amendment, and I hope that we shall not be accused of doing a "cover-up" job for the road hauliers. We are actively concerned about the various safety provisions, but I do not think they go so far in this Bill as the Government seem to think they do. For instance, we are entirely with the Government as to the necessity for controlling the hours of driving. We welcome these provisions, and I am not attempting to make any exception. I am trying to find out what the Government are going to do about the rather serious matter of safety, arising from the lack of flexibility, which the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, would go a

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long way to meet, and which my Amendment might also go some way to meet.
When you get seasonal and perishable goods travelling distances or for periods of time that are just marginal to the regulations laid down by the Bill, you get a serious problem arising. The producers, who may be farmers or horticulturists, may either have to produce extra temporary drivers, who may be in short supply, or they may run the risk of delayed deliveries, with a real danger of loss, and possibly health risks in dealing with some foodstuffs. Or they run the risk, which has been raised earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Somers, and which is really a very serious risk, that a lot of chances are going to be taken and a lot of dangerous driving is going to be done in order to get through in the period allowed.
I am quite well aware that there is no particular Amendment or extension of hours which makes much more sense than any other. The difference between 10 and 11 hours, for instance, covers the position of taking fish, I am told, from Newlyn to Billingsgate; and this is a very marginal case. We shall be told, I think, that people can be exempted from this clause by regulations; and as noble Lords opposite know, I think there is a very considerable case for saying that exemptions should he made only by regulations. But I do not think it is so in this particular case, because it seems to me that here, either by adopting; the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale, or by adopting my own, we can give an extra flexibility to the Bill. With his you get extra flexibility; with mine you get a position where you can definitely identify in the Bill the goods for which it is necessary to make this exception without drawing the exceptions over-wide.
I think that there are very real dangers of speeding in order to defeat this Bill. I am sure there ought to be some flexibility written in in these cases of ripe, perishable goods, particularly when shipped at seasonal times by horticulturists and by farmers. I hope that the Minister will be able to satisfy us that some way is going to be found of dealing with these problems which will not involve the dangers which we at the moment see.
9.42 p.m.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I want to put in a plea for flexibility, not for the reasons which have been advanced by
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my noble friends, but for reasons concerning snow-plough crews, particularly in Scotland. A snow-plough cannot be driven by anybody; to drive o le is a skilled job. We have only a limited number of drivers available who can drive snow-ploughs on occasions when we get a severe storm. Situations have arisen where it is vital for saving life that snow-ploughs should work long and continuous hours. Not only that, but the situation has frequently arisen when snow-ploughs themselves have been bogged down and snowed up. It seems to me that, without flexibility, this provision would involve snow-plough crews in breaking the law to do their job—a job which they do unselfishly and without thought for their own comfort—and I think this is wrong.
9.44 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: I agree to the valuable suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, that we can discuss his Amendment, No. 233, with that of the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale. I do not agree that they are precisely similar, but they are in the same field. I do not know whether Amendment No. 234 would also come in the same field. If not, we will just deal with the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale. Lord Merrivale argued that what he was asking for was in effect the same as the draft E.E.C. regulations; but that would be the case only when the second stage of this Bill became operative, and we certainly do not know when that will be. As of now what he is comparing is our proposal of 10 hours driving plus one twice a week, with the European custom in most European countries now of nine hours a day driving plus one twice a week. So what he is asking for, certainly in the first stage, is more thin is happening in Europe now.
The second leg on which he bases his case is that unless this extra hour is granted twice a week there will be some services which cannot give the service that they now give, in fact he quoted a senior member of the Farmers' Union who said that it would not be possible to give the present' service for livestock and perishable produce. I do not know that gentleman's authority for making that statement, but certainly he could not have been quoting any Minister

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to that effect: he is expressing a personal opinion, an opinion with which I disagree. I am not going to leave it at that. If there is any particular type of operation in which it can be shown that there is a special need for more than 10 hours a day that need can be dealt with under subsection (10).
I want to come to Lord Beaumont's point, and also to the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven and his snowploughs, because he asked for flexibility. I really think that the flexibility is within subsection (10) of this clause and part of subsection (11). Perhaps noble Lords would go through subsection (10) with me. It says:
"For the purpose of enabling vehicles to which this Part of this Act applies to be used in cases of emergency or otherwise to meet a special need, the Minister may by regulations—

(a) create exemptions from all or any of the requirements of subsections (1) to (6) of this section in such cases and subject to such conditions as may be specified in the regulations;"

That is general because regulations are not made for momentary application.
I come now to the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, and paragraph (b) says:
"(b) empower the traffic commissioners or licensing authority for any area, subject to the provisions of the regulations—

(i) to dispense with the observance of all or any of those requirements (either generally or in such circumstances or to such extent as the commissioners or authority think fit) in any particular case for which provision is not made under paragraph (a) of this subsection;"

I can think of no more perfect example than the snowploughs that Lord Stone-haven mentioned to fit the circumstances of a particular case where they can dispense with the observance of all or any of those requirements. That is within the powers of the commissioners or the authority. The authority will not be so completely daft as to say, "No, you cannot work to clear the snow away".
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I thank the noble Lord for his remarks. But can the traffic commissioners do this in retrospect or have they to get a crystal ball and see where these emergencies could arise? That is my worry. I am not quite clear.
LORD STONHAM: If the noble Viscount will read a little further he will see after sub-paragraph (ii), in line 38:
"and regulations under this subsection may enable any dispensation under paragraph (b)(i) of this subsection to be granted retrospectively and provide for a document purporting to be a certificate granted by virtue of paragraph (b)(ii) of this subsection to be accepted in evidence without further proof."
So I have one satisfied customer.
Now I come to the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley. What the noble Lord is asking for, though I am quite sure he did not mean to, is a quite substantial enlargement, to 11 hours, because it would be 11 driving hours, and therefore it is substantially more than drivers are driving now. When I was discussing Lord Teviot's Amendment he was rather apt to dispute this point with me, but I think he conceded that the 11 hours included working on unloading the vehicle and that kind of thing. But under the terms of this Amendment, 11 hours would or could be 11 hours of actual permitted driving at the wheel. Therefore there would be more hours at the wheel than now, and therefore it would be less productive.
Additionally, the introduction of the new hours rule is to be linked with the introduction of revised working practices, and operators' associations and unions will be expected to adopt new productivity agreements in the light of the requirements of Part VI of the Bill, and revised working schedules should enable vehicles to be used more intensively.
I will deal with the point about perishable produce that the noble Lord mentioned. If a journey is delayed by circumstances which could not reasonably have been foreseen, and as a result the limits on hours are exceeded, then Clause 95 provides the person concerned with a good defence or excuse. May I indicate the subsection in the Bill, subsection (11), where it says:
"If any of the requirements of subsections (1) to (6) of this section, or any condition having effect by virtue of regulations made under subsection (1) thereof, is contravened in the case of any driver—

(a) that driver; and

(b) any other person (being that driver's employer or a person to whose orders that driver was subject) who caused or permitted the contravention, shall be liable…but

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a person shall not be liable to be convicted…if he proves to the Court—

(i) that the contravention was due to unavoidable delay in the completion of a journey arising out of circumstances which he could not reasonably have foreseen."

So we get that standby for the exceptional case of unforeseen circumstances.
With regard to perishable produce or livestock generally—coming back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Merrivale this, under subsection (10), would be a matter for general consideration in the Minister's regulations. I cannot, of course, guarantee anything on this, but I can give an assurance that where a case is made under the new transport conditions and the new regulations and with the revised schedules, that the goods cannot be delivered within those hours, then it would be a good case for consideration under the regulations. Certainly that is as far as I ought to go and as far as I am going on this particular point. But I am firmly of the opinion that all reasonable points, and certainly Lord Merrivale's points, are already met by Clause 95(10). I feel, too, that the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, can be met by regulations. With that, I hope that both noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their Amendments.
9.54 p.m.
LORD MERRIVALE: I would thank the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for going as far as he has, but I do not think he has gone far enough. First of all, he said that, in effect, what I am asking would be in line with Continental practice only when the second stage became operative. I cannot see what is wrong in that, as I assume that the Government propose to make the second stage effective in the not too distant future.
Then, the Minister went on to quote from subsection (10). He said that the Minister may by regulations make exemptions in cases of emergency, or whenever it is necessary to meet a special need. But throughout the evening the noble Lord has been constantly saying that the Minister will, by regulation, make exemptions. It is fantastic the number of exemptions the Ministers seems to be empowered to make by regulations. I should have thought this seemed to be a much more reasonable
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proposal, and one that would avoid the trouble of the Minister making all these exemptions: because if, in effect, he makes exemptions for the industries that I have mentioned, and the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has mentioned, he will have to make exemptions for the brewing, fuel, agricultural, horticultural, catering, perishable products of the sea, and livestock industries and so forth.
LORD STONHAM: Nothing I have said justifies what the noble Lord has just said. That may be his own interpretation, but cases will have to be made out.
LORD MERRIVALE: I agree. But what I am saying is that all these industries will endeavour to make out a case, and I should have though: that what I am asking to put in the Bill is reasonable. In a matter of a reasonable period of time it will be exactly in line with Common Market procedure or practice, and I cannot see what is wrong with that.
LORD BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY: I should like to thank the Minister for his reply to the points I made on Amendment 233. I think they go a considerable way to reassure us about this. There is one point of principle, I think, between noble Lords on the Benches opposite and ourselves here, in that we think that when it is possible to define fairly closely a number of people who should be excepted it is probably better to write it into the Bill than to trust to regulations. We realise that this is not the Government's view, and we certainly do not want to press the matter at this stage.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
LORD STONHAM: We have not got as far as we hoped with the Bill, but we have got as far as we expected with the clock. I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved, accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at three minutes past ten o'clock.